Rescue Me
by Willofthewisp
Summary: A Savior and a Captain, an Evil Queen and a Dark One, a Dragon Slayer and a Bandit Princess all discovered rescuing Henry was only the beginning. My own Season 3. Several pairings, some canon, some not.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Welcome! This story will be structured similar to the show in which it will be told from various points of view by characters in different locations. And, as hinted by "prologue," there will be flashbacks peppered in here and there. I do not own the show or the characters.**

* * *

_She didn't want to burp him with a police officer in the room. Emma drew the line at that, although in just a matter of hours she'd mastered the art of formula-feeding a newborn, had wiped a greenish tar substance off of his bottom, and rubbed alcohol on the crusty flesh protruding from his navel. The police officer, sprawled on the sofa in the room meant for the father, or, you know, loved ones, had leaned his head back and dozed off an hour ago, so she gathered the baby up to her and tapped at his back._

_ Next time, throw a towel over your shoulder first, she thought, blinking back tears at the notion of a next time. The lady from the foster services would be coming any minute, and it was all Emma could do to not cleave her son to her chest and sob. _

_ "Hey," she whispered, just as he was starting to close his eyes. Great timing, she thought with a sarcastic twitch of her mouth. One word in and the kid was bored out of his mind. "Hey, I need to tell you before you go—they'll find somebody really good for you. They know how to do that now better than they did when I was little. I...I can't take care of you. I don't have a place to live. I don't have a job, insurance, anyone to help me... You'll have your best chance this way."_

_ Futile, discussing life's problems with a newborn. He fell asleep quicker than anyone she'd ever known. Laying him down on the bed in front of her, she ran her hand over the blanket the nurse had helped her swaddle him in. Rebellious kid, that was for sure, always kicking out a foot. _

_ The clock ticked away, five minutes until noon, five minutes left of mothering._

_ "You'll be fine, kid." To hell with her voice trembling. She could summon up a poker face in a split second, but controlling her voice...worst kind of tell. "Hey, Officer Narcolepsy'sz asleep. You want a lullaby? I know a couple." Did she? Biting her lip, she frowned at only knowing the one where the kid falls out of the tree. Not the kind of impression to leave a kid with. _

_ "Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea/and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee..." she sang in a whisper, glancing at the cop every other second. No one had heard her sing since, well, that wasn't important. Tears streamed down her face, but as long as there was the song, she could control her voice._

_ "Together they would travel on a ship with billowed sails/Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail/Noble kings and princes would bow whenever they came/Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name."_

_ "Miss Swan?"_

_ Emma's head snapped up, her fingers recoiling from the baby's cheek like she'd touched a burner. _

_ "Yes?"_

_ "I'm Mr. Slight, from Social Services?" A tall man with a cocky smile and a thick mop of blonde hair paused at the threshold looking like a freakin' Ken doll. _

_ "They said on the phone a Miss-" _

_ "I know, but she's delayed. I've got my credentials." He opened an official-looking briefcase on the wheeled cart where she ate her meals. Not pausing to look at the baby, she noticed, but then, how many babies did Social Services people see? Not everyone thought them the novelty she did. She glanced at his paperwork, heard the names of everyone she'd been talking to since she'd found out she was pregnant, and, other than something insanely boyish in the man's eyes...seriously, by eyes alone she would have put him as a teenager, he checked out. _

_ "And he'll, he'll have a good home, right?" she asked, tightening her lips and inhaling. Mr. Slight, who was whistling a strange little song at her son, looked up and grinned. The nerve, Emma thought, about to say something. Grinning? _

_ "He's already set to go with a family."_

_ "Really?"_

_ "He'll need a few checkups and a week or two before heading out, but he'll get the very best. Don't you worry about that. Did you want a forwarding address? I'm sure she'd be happy to talk to you. A lot of adoptive parents understand the benefit of including the biological parents in the child's everyday upbringing."_

_ "No. No, I, I just needed to know he'll be taken care of. He's special." She didn't care if it sounded stupid or cliched. It was true._

_ "Yes, he's a very special child," Mr. Slight said, still smiling as he held the baby with one hand and his briefcase with the other and strolled right out the door with what should be her very reason to live. _

_ Emma's head fell back onto the pillow, her bracelet-filled wrists flying up to her face to muffle her sobbing even though no one was around to hear it._


	2. One

Neverland boasted with its silence. Only the faintest breezes, the waters were usually still. The sun shone in a way that the Never Sea seemed more a mirror held up to the sky, polished tin. The main island looked the same from every angle, beautiful and conquerable from far away.

Killian knew up close proved a different story.

The journey through the portal had knocked everyone off their feet, but now they stood out in the middle of the wretched calm. He grabbed the wheel and hoisted himself up.

"Where is it? Where's Neverland?" Regina asked, her voice an inch from panic.

"You're in it, Your Majesty. Welcome to the Never Sea."

"That doesn't sound too optimistic," the man...Dan, David, he wanted to say, because no man should call the other "Charming." It was David, wasn't it, Swan's father?

"It's only despairing if you can't navigate it."

"How long does it take to get to land?" Emma asked, filled with the steady resolve of someone hell-bent on recovering what was hers and making others pay for taking it. He knew the feeling.

"A few days. Faster if we don't drop anchor. Now, if you will all spread out and make yourselves useful." They had all huddled near the helm, save for the Crocodile. Killian's eyes scanned the ship, promising the rest of him to have that man in his line of sight for the duration of the voyage. He stood with his hands on the rail, staring down the water.

* * *

Using hundred-year-old charts, traveling by night was faster since he had the stars to check his bearings. For too long the Jolly Roger had been quiet, and so he'd grown unaccustomed to the common shouting and murmuring of having a crew. Crew, he rolled his eyes, feeling calluses grow atop the calluses already on his hand. Not a one of them knew the bow from the stern. Desperate, he'd grant them that. Capable, he'd begrudgingly grant them that, too, but for the first time since the hospital, he felt weighed down by his own body. Legs and eyes heavy, back feeling like it would break, surrounded by the Never Sea, the Sea of Bland...

And Snow White herself, it seemed, suddenly at his side.

"When is the last time you slept?" she asked after a hesitant smile. Asking questions about yourself when you didn't like the answers wasn't really his cup of tea.

"Accompanied or alone?" he asked, flashing her a grin. Hoping that would get rid of her, he raised an eyebrow at an undaunted sweetness.

"I ask, Captain, because." She gritted her teeth at the title, just barely. "You could show me what to do and I could show someone else and we could take shifts. That way you could get some rest. Going onto one of these islands is not something I would want to do groggy."

"One of you at the helm. That makes about as much sense as letting a child operate one of those cars of yours."

"You have a crew. It would work best to take advantage of that, wouldn't you think?"

He'd avoided Snow in the Enchanted Forest, unable to truly pinpoint why. He didn't fear her, as he feared no one, but he found her neither pleasant company nor deserving of any wrath and so he'd tried to keep his distance, certain it had something to do with this persistent sweetness she wielded like a weapon. And mentioning having a grandson, even though he knew it before—a woman her age revealing she had a grandson was all sorts of unappealing.

"I do not have a crew."

Snow sighed, stepped up to the wheel, and adjusted the backpack strapped to her back.

"I can offer you two choices," she said. "In this bag is a drink called Red Bull. For emergencies. It will give you energy, keep you sailing the rest of the day and probably all night, and then just when we'll be so close to searching the island, you'll need someone to take the helm anyway because you'll be off in a corner getting sicker than a dog."

He laughed. "Spilling my guts does unfortunately happen once in a while, m'lady."

"From the other end?" There was a pause. "Your other choice is that you show me now, get some rest, and then be at your best when night falls and we'll need someone with experience the closer we get to docking."

Balancing the wheel with his hook, he faced her, meeting a silk-hiding-steel expression, willing him to feel the toll the last twenty-four hours at the helm had taken on him. With a muffled groan, he switched to his hand and used his hook to point out at the horizon.

"Port," he said to the left. "Starboard. A little notch can go a long way. Fairly intuitive." Of course, he had his own brand of a silk-hiding-steel expression, which he took the liberty of showing her now. "You find me if anything, even the slightest thing, changes."

Nodding, Snow manned the helm, breathing a little deeper than normal to settle nerves, and steered. He paused only a moment before stepping down into his cabin.

Closing the door behind him, he did eye his bed over in the corner, but instead found himself pacing the floorboards with his hand rifling through his hair since it had nothing else to do. Bloody hell, he couldn't do this. He could not be these people's...he was so tired no word seemed to match the blurred image his brain had concocted. Killian was not someone used to being needed, wanted, on occasion, but not needed, not integral, not so damned necessary a boy's life might depend on it. And they hadn't even reached land...oh, that would be a bloody show, all right. Snow and the Queen wore heels and the Crocodile, Most Powerful Being With the Most Emotional Baggage, had been rendered a cripple once again. And as Captain, it would be up to him to determine how to deal with all of that. He couldn't do it. They were all stark-raving mad to even entertain the idea that he could.

He himself had to be mad to have turned the ship around and gone back in the first place. Why? Why, why, why deliberately step into a trap? Milah-he snapped his eyes shut and conjured her image, the years, decades, centuries, requiring more and more effort to do so. Determined, romantic Milah with glass-green eyes spent the beginnings of each night chatting with the ceiling about when the best time to go see her son was, Killian staying still so not to interrupt her fantasy. Always formulating a time within the year and then always changing her mind and deciding to prolong it. He'd deduced he would be damned if he did and damned if he didn't join in the plotting with her. If he did, he would be feeding her lies and introducing her to what could only be a son's rejection. If he didn't, she called him an unsupportive cad during some passionate fit and then, after having stormed out for a half hour, would crawl back in and curl up in his lap. The fantasies were her way of justifying her decision, he knew, and he was her decision, so he refused to interfere.

Did she not deserve avenging anymore? Was time finally wearing down on him so hard he had put everything on hold for this debacle of a rescue?

Stopping mid-step, he slid his hand out of his hair and inhaled. He wished for the, what was it, morphine, they'd given him at the hospital. Cleared his head right away. Sighing, he kicked off his boots and unscrewed his hook, letting his coat slump to the floor in a heap.

Fretting about it all would do precious little now. That would unfortunately be as cleared as his head would get for now.

Killian fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

* * *

No dreams, good. He hated dreaming, especially about the past, when one could only watch like a hapless babe as the unspeakable unfolded around him. However, waking up in Neverland was far from ideal. Taking his hook from one of the drawers in the bulkhead, he screwed it back on, shaking his head with a laugh that Snow had indeed been right.

He checked his pocket watch. Four hours? Scrambling up, he threw on his boots and coat and ran to one of the portholes. Still light, but twilight here saw its share of dangers, even out in the Never Sea. With an inhale, Killian stepped outside with an easy, unrelenting swagger.

David at the wheel now, he noticed, everyone but Regina in sight. He meandered down the deck, rehearsing just how he would tell them all to brace themselves once night officially fell, when a most unladylike "damn" nicked his ears.

Swan sat on the steps, eyes zeroed in on the small, rectangular contraptions everyone in her world had, the thing with all the numbers on it. Smirking, he crossed over to her, resting his elbow on the railing.

"And just who did you plan on calling here?" He smirked when she rolled her eyes at him, one part pleased he'd ruffled the swan's feathers and one part pleased he remembered using the device was called "calling."

"I was trying to find a picture."

"They hold pictures?"

"Not here, they don't." She stood up, stuffing it in her pocket. "So what's Neverland like?"

"What's Neverland like?" he scoffed. "What a loaded question, Swan! And here I was beginning to think you didn't like my company."

"We need to know what we can expect." He did want to ask if she had her gun on her, but felt inquiring about it now wouldn't give him a straight answer. "I wish I'd had my wallet on me," she sighed to herself.

"You can't pay off the dangers here, lass."

"No, I'd...I'd wanted a picture of Henry," she said. Ah. That made sense.

"Ask the Queen. I'm sure she might have one you could borrow."

"She's stuck on a ship with everyone she hates and hasn't killed anyone yet," Emma scolded. "I think I'll give her her space."

"Point taken. Where is she, anyway?"

"Making dinner." He laughed. "No, really. She's sadly pretty good. Are you going to tell us what to expect or not?"

"Swan, trust me! Once the sun sets, you'll see all manner of trouble. But we have a few minutes." He leered at her, hoping for a change of subject. "What do all your stories say you can expect?"

"Well, it's an island with Lost Boys, Indians, fairies, guys with hooks...am I close?"

"More or less," he said. "As long as we're in the water, it'll be the mermaids that'll cause the most trouble. Land, however. Land is something else. It's everything you said, vicious beasts of every shape and size, the Lost Ones, the indigenous peoples, only about a quarter or so of whose tribes like me...but that's not the worst of it."

"Then why don't you tell me the worst of it?" she challenged, folding her arms. That face. She could end whole wars with that face, so severe, so chilling.

A pall fell over the ship. Sunset. His eyes darted out towards the water, looking. Now hadn't been the time he'd wanted to address much of anything. Perhaps the rushed version could cover a little.

"The worst part of Neverland," he breathed, "is Neverland. It's one of those places that learned too well how much better it is to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. It pulls out all the stops if it wants you to stay, quite the seductress, really. The flowers open up and give off their scents right when you pass by. There's snow, just the right texture, piles and piles of it in some places, but the air never grows colder and it's not cold to the touch. It can be beautiful. And it can make you forget so well you aren't even aware you're forgetting anything."

He backed up, a twinge startled that she hadn't already done so, her stoic face giving way to something akin to fear.

"Why didn't you say any of this before?"

"Because there are other things to worry with now. And rest assured." He threw out a smile. "A mother's love trumps anything this place can do. I highly doubt you'll forget your boy any time soon. Happy thoughts can go a long way here." He'd wandered back closer to her.

"But he can forget me..." she whispered, so softly Killian felt it would be an invasion of privacy to respond to it.

"Pardon me." Rumpelstiltskin on his ship. If he concentrated on that too long, he seethed. How smug, standing there with that bloody cane always in hand. "You wouldn't happen to have any enchantments already on this vessel, would you, besides the invisibility?"

"Fastest ship the likes of you will ever come across," he growled.

"Yes, that's dandy, but I was hoping for something more along the lines of a shield."

"Shield?" Emma asked, weaving between them to the rail. "What's out there?"

They looked out on the water, a full moon overhead. It reflected in broken pieces along the rising waves, like a path of stardust. Spray shot up, breaking the surface, followed by a long black fin. Others surfaced after it.

"What are they?" Emma asked, horror washing away a burgeoning smile. Perhaps she'd taken to heart the island's abilities. What was often the most beautiful was often the most deadly.

"Dolphins," Rumpelstiltskin answered her. "Feeding. Tell her, Captain, just what happens to feed on them."

Killian paused, not liking the idea of being the Crocodile's prop for his little speeches.

"Why, mermaids, sir," he said with mock congeniality. Craning his head until he could see the wheel, he called up to David. "Keep her steady! Stay clear of the starboard side!"

The Jolly Roger made a sharp turn, sending the sound of rushing water into the night.

Another noise answered it, a high-pitched squealing wail that ran on forever, followed by a series of clicks.

"The hell..." he heard Emma trail off. Silence again. Not even the Jolly Roger itself dared to break it.

"Hook..." David called from the helm. Killian held up an arm, waiting.

Another wail answered the last one, this one a broken hooting wail that sounded even closer to the ship. Regina tiptoed up the steps to the deck, opening her mouth to ask what the noises were until she stared out at the dolphin pod, their movements more scattered, more frantic.

The ship rumbled in spite of the still waters.

"I'm coming up!" Killian shouted to David before glancing back at Rumpelstiltskin. "If you're so keen on a shield, now may be the time to act." Water crashed onto the steps. "Get away from the rails!"

If he knew how many, that would help.

"I don't suppose you have a..." David began, stepping back from the wheel.

"An armory? Back table in the cabin. Do help yourselves."

They propelled themselves onto the deck, flopping blue creatures twice as long as a human. The moon shone down on a small crest centered on their skulls. The glint of their enormous fish eyes chilled his bones. Three of them, six webbed hands stomped along the slippery deck. For a split second, no one moved.


	3. Two

Rumpelstiltskin acted first, summoning a fireball over his open palm. Hurling it into their direction, the creatures squealed to each other.

Another leaped onto the sail.

Charming raced out of the cabin with armfuls of swords, passing them to whoever he could. Turning, he faced the one clinging to the sail, spying fangs in a pronounced female mouth. Sword readied, he swiped at it and watched it scramble further up the sail, its torso almost right above him. Stay focused, he told himself. It didn't matter how many might be toppling over onto the deck if this one dropped down on him. The very thought of touching it nauseated him more than a lurching ship ever could.

It unleashed a sudden wail, its body flailing for a moment. He had to make sure his sword was in the right place. Straightening it until he held it perpendicular to the deck, he swayed back until the creature fell right into the blade.

Its thrashing covered him in water and blocked his view of the deck. The odors of fish and blood blending together right above him clenched his stomach. He roared as he threw the sword over his shoulder, sending it and the creature onto the deck with a loud thud. Prying his sword out of its ribcage took more leverage than he'd expected. He placed a hesitant boot onto its torso to help him pull. Echoes of swords clanging behind him gave him extra motivation. He turned just in time to see one of them drag Snow, then another drag Regina, into the black abyss below them.

"No!" he heard Emma scream. She sprinted towards the bow and he followed, stopping when she did at a coil of rope.

"I'm going down!" she shouted over the wailing, now a chorus of anger and strategy, he guessed.

"Here!" Taking the rope, Charming fastened it around her waist before grasping it. "Gold! Cover us!" Through the darkness, another fireball whooshed past them right into another one of the creatures hoisting itself over the rail. His heart skipped a beat watching Emma hurl herself into the water. The rope slid in his fists, burning his skin, until it grew taut. He peered down but the ship cast a shadow over the water, the moon on its other side. Not knowing what else to do, he counted the seconds.

"One...two..."

The ship lunged forward, nearly sending him overboard.

* * *

Emma gasped for air, having to remember how to swim all over again. They couldn't have taken them that far down, not yet. She flipped the wet strands of hair out of her face and swallowed, preparing to take a breath and go back down, unsure how she would be able to see much of anything.

"Emma!"

"Mary Margaret!" Her mother held onto a notch in the ship's hull, waist out of the water. Swimming towards her, Emma held the rope out in front of her.

"Where's Regina?"

"I don't know. I shook the one off of me."

"Climb up the rope. Help David." Each grain of salt on her lips felt like a nail through her coffin. "I'll find her...go."

"Emma!"

"If I don't find Henry, I want you to!" she spat, the salt making her mouth more slack. She spun around while treading. The outline of heads bobbed close by. There would be nowhere to hide. The ship moved too fast for her to brace herself against it. The round shadows emerged into Regina and one of the creatures, the latter trying to pull her under. It had latched itself behind her, restraining her arms so she could barely move. Emma tried to think, tried to pat herself down as silently as she could in search of something on her person to use. Great, just great. Regina's panting grew louder. She'd be too drained to fight much longer.

There was nothing else to do. Emma pulled her turtleneck up over her head and lunged out at the figures, wrapping the shirt around the creature's head. A webbed hand smacked the side of her head, hard enough for her to see stars, but she shook it off and tightened her grip more.

Regina dog-paddled closer and pushed its head into the water, nodding at Emma to pull more. Emma straddled the creature's back, wondering, hoping, the flaps she'd seen for not even a full second on its neck were gills.

* * *

"Snow!" Charming called, unable to extend an arm to help her over the rail. Hook had had to let go of the wheel to ram his hook into one of the creatures that had been inches away from trying to drag him overboard, but even then Charming couldn't bring himself to tie off the rope. The image of it snapping was too much. Snow ran to his side and pulled.

"I'm pulling her up," he said.

"She was so close to Regina. Give her a second to signal us."

Signal? Pretty sure it would take both Emma's arms to fight off one of those things, he thought, a sudden jerk of the rope giving him the sensation of ripping his arms from their sockets. But then...he peered down as far as he could. A flash of blonde was all he needed.

"I'm pulling her up!" he said again, heaving with Snow next to him. The longest five seconds of his life passed until Emma and Regina's hands fumbled around the rail. Rumpelstiltskin hobbled over to them to help them over with one arm, his other busy conjuring a silvery wind of some kind.

"Hold on!" he shouted. The light blinded Charming, knocking him off his feet and onto the deck so hard he couldn't tell if he lost consciousness or not. White. Black. The hisses and clicks of the mermaids swarmed through his mind until they evaporated into the air. Bringing himself to his knees, he looked around. Emma lied close, soaked to the bone, and...good lord.

"Here," he said, throwing his jacket over her. "Gold, come on. Something dry and, and..." He gestured at the general area where his daughter lied gasping for air in her bra.

"I'll take that as gratitude," he said with a wave of his hand. In an instant, everyone's clothes were dry, the emerald turtleneck Emma had on under her coat earlier thankfully intact.

* * *

Emma had never had a migraine before, although she sometimes felt she was entitled to one, so the dull throbbing all over her head, her father's face still a blur when he pulled her to her feet—she tried to remember what worked for migraines and if her mother had any of it in the backpack. She squinted until the lines of the deck's floorboards sharpened and then looked over at Regina. There really wasn't anything to be said, her eyes darting away from hers once they'd made contact.

"Where are we?" Mary Margaret asked, slipping an arm around her.

"Closer to land," Hook said from the helm, trying to kick off a mermaid carcass while still holding onto the wheel.

"I thought I'd save a shield for another time," Gold said. "This was nothing more than launching the ship at super speed."

Making the jump to light speed is what Henry would call it, Emma thought. For a moment, she allowed her head to sink down on Mary Margaret's shoulder. That's teamwork for you...wait...

"Why another time?"

"Because that's the nature of magic here, Miss Swan, so we will all have to tread carefully. Neverland demands a price for magic upfront. Once a spell is cast, it cannot be cast again while we are here."

"You mean you wouldn't be able to launch the ship like that again if we needed?" Regina had braced herself against the rail to catch her breath.

"Well, you could do it, and you could," he said, pointing at Emma, "if you could get past this reluctance you have to wield it, but I can't do it anymore as long as we're here." With a sigh, he turned back towards Regina. "We'll have to tread carefully with what we choose to use and not use while we are here."

"Just as well," Hook called from the helm. Now that the carcass was gone, Emma could look in his direction. "We'll find a suitable place to anchor for the rest of the night and then the rest of your magic can dry up in the morning."

* * *

Room assignments on the ship couldn't have been all that different from college dorm assignments, or maybe summer camp assignments, Charming had thought the night before when they'd had to square away the mundane before anything else. Aside from the captain's cabin, there were three smaller cabins right below decks, each with two bunks, and then, another level down, hammocks for the lowest ranking of the crew. Rumpelstiltskin kept the starboard one himself, he and Snow at port, and Emma and Regina in the middle, which made him uneasier than ever.

Emma had volunteered for a shift, and Rumpelstiltskin had been forbidden from touching the helm, which now left the queen alone in the middle cabin. Charming knocked, sighing at the gesture.

"Yes?"

"We're going to talk," he said, barging through the door, forcing her back, her smug, self-righteous face trying not quite hard enough to show concern was the same.

"So talk," she said.

"How many times is my daughter going to risk her neck for you?"

"If you think I let one of those things take me on purpose, I'd have been more than happy to have switched places with you-"

"I need to know you'll do the same." Tears welled in his eyes and, damn it, he couldn't dry them up, not right now. "You love Henry. I get it. But we're a team now, and by now I'm sure you know that we would risk our lives to help you. Gods know we've done it enough. Are you going to risk your life for us? Tell me!" She was up against the bulkhead now, her eyes cold. The darkest part of him wondered if, if the worst happened and he lost them for good, if he would still risk life and limb to help her. The best part of him wasn't even surprised that he couldn't answer that right now.

"I will do everything I can to keep everyone here safe." She said it in a way that she might as well have been reading stereo instructions.

He'd been in favor of execution. He understood why Snow hadn't been, but how he'd hoped she'd change her mind. Their entire lives seemed to revolve around debating whether or not Regina could be trusted, with their lives, with their grandson's well-being, with the entire town's well-being. He felt as if he'd spent his whole life wondering if she could be believed.

"See that you do," was all he could say on his way out. He didn't bother to close her door for her. He lingered in the narrow corridor. Could they even reach Henry, wherever he was, without killing each other? Charming believed they could, believed people could rise to the occasion, believed truces could be reached in favor of the greater good. But then he'd just confronted the one person he just might genuinely hated and made demands of her. Leaders without followers tended to clash, he knew. Without any answers, he entered his small cabin where Snow stood with her arms folded.

"We could have lost her," she whispered.

His instinct was, had always been, to go to her, and this time was no different. Wrapping his arms around her, he breathed a sigh of relief that with her, he didn't need to answer any questions for now.


	4. Three

_ Dear Belle,_

_ I write this as a log in hopes that, if you are indeed right and we will see each other again, I can give it to you to read. At the present, however, if I can pretend you're here to talk to, then maybe I can pretend to know what you would tell me to do. _

_ I feel more and more useless with each passing minute, and, believe me, that's not something I've felt in a long while. I only acquiesce to that infernal man's insistence I don't touch the helm to avoid any conflict that could keep us from finding Henry sooner. I still have my limp in Neverland, too, so can't steer, can't run—and the rules of magic here operate in such a way I could easily get sucked dry. _

_ I've tried to pass on a few skills to the Swan girl, but she is too hesitant. She doubts both herself and that the magic can do any good. Her parents' ability to wield magic is limited to the vast amount of True Love in both of them, which could come in handy. It has before._

_ But I'm sure you're dying to read the details of this adventure. In many ways it could rival the Jules Verne stories you like so much. Our first stop on land was this morning._

_ Neverland is simply the biggest island in this sea world. Smaller ones branch out from it on either side. From above, it might look like a crab with the other islands as its appendages. The small islands are filled with rolling hills, some rocky, so it was in places excruciating to keep up with the others. The native people here resemble the Native Americans I'm sure one of your books covers, if not in your personal collection then at the library. They hunt the beasts that prowl both day and night in the vast forests and jungles. Because each island has a slightly different climate, they trade with each other, pelts and things. _

_ I will say this for Hook—he knew this and came prepared, offering treasures that had probably spent centuries locked away in his ship. Not much, but enough for boots, weapons. Due to my limp, I can't control a sword as steadily as I could before and have to content myself with a bow and arrows to conserve my magic. Pride won't let me shoot worse than Snow White. _

_ I spend the spare moments working on a tracking spell. It is a complicated potion and it can take a while to brew. I must be careful not to err in any step since I would be unable to go back and correct my mistake. I have forced myself to show Regina the process so she might be able to replicate it. She does not have Emma's scope, but she does have the experience. It's a bit like singing, I'd imagine. You might be born with a natural talent and you might not be, but anyone can improve on what they already have with time and training. _

_ I hope my first letter finds you well, that the cloaking spell worked. If you would like, since you are once again my dear Belle, you can hire someone to run the shop in my absence. You would be my first choice, but I will not come between you and reopening the library. However, someone does need to run the shop as far too many trinkets in there are more than what they seem. Maybe you already know that. If you have thought of this, and I'm sure you have, then you have gone in search of the keys. They are on me, but I left a small second spell on the scroll for you, the magical equivalent of picking a lock, only with more guaranteed results. _

_ Rummage around as much as you want and deal with the items in the front as you like, but I hope you keep the items in the back. You may recognize a few of them from the Dark Castle, and so would know they are of high importance. In the wrong hands, they could mean disaster. Yes, that is mentioned on the scroll._

_ I want you to know I could not have done this without you. That sounds harsh since I had to say goodbye to you to do it, but while it is now for myself I try to be a better man, it started with wanting to be a better one for you. In my mind, I had pictured you meeting Bae and finally coming together. You would have liked him, Belle. He was so eager to be a good father. My work is all that keeps me from constant grieving. For him, and for us. You have my love always._

_Rumpelstiltskin_

* * *

**A/N: This is just the first of some letter-chapters in which the story will be told through Rumple's perspective. It's a short chapter, so there are two this week! Yay! Speaking of how Belle is doing, let's pop in on Storybrooke. I do not own OUAT. Please read and review!**


	5. Four

After casting the cloaking spell, Belle held her breath, shivering in her coat next to Ruby because, because she just couldn't do such a thing alone. They stood shoulder to shoulder in nervous silence, simply staring down the road and then up into the sky, which remained unchanged.

"How do we know it worked?" Ruby asked in a hushed voice. As if on cue, a robin thumped along an invisible wall in the sky. "Oh."

"They can't see us now," Belle murmured, reaching out and letting her fingertips scrape against the clear barrier. She smiled in hopes that endorphins or serotonin or some jumbled word in a medical book would bring her some cheer. Storybrooke was safe, and yet Belle knew being erased from a world, being hidden away, proved to be anything but a victory. Feeling an arm around her, her arm fell back to her side.

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"Now, I think we have to get things in order," Ruby said, tossing her hair. "No mayor, no sheriff, no creepy guy who knows everything collecting rent. No offense." She nudged Belle with her elbow. "I say we hold a town meeting and do some serious voting. And, we should let everyone know just how brave Mr. Gold is being."

"Thanks." Few people in the world could claim Belle was enough at ease with them to rest her head on their shoulder. Ruby could boast that.

"Belle," Ruby cleared her throat, her eyes wide. "We should totally run for mayor and sheriff."

"What?"

"Come on! Let's throw our hats in the ring! It wouldn't have worked before the curse was broken, waitress and all, but things are different now, and you're the one who just saved the town with that spell!"

"No one's going to want a librarian that spent twenty-eight years in a cell for...mayor?" She cocked her head and eyed Ruby.

"That's what I was thinking—you the mayor and I'd be the sheriff, but with Leroy as my deputy. And just until, you know, Emma returns and we go back to taking things one day at a time until there's a magic bean with our name on it."

"Leroy. Dreamy. Grumpy—what's your real name?" Belle asked. "I mean, if you don't mind my asking. Ruby's pretty, but it's what Regina forced you to be."

"If you don't want to run with me, that's fine. I could have the mayoral position and Leroy can run this town as the sheriff. If you think that's a good idea..."

"Ruby, hold on," Belle said. "I, I don't know how to run a town and do you know anything about law enforcement?"

"Belle, you were a freakin' princess and I helped dethrone the Evil Queen. I think we'll be okay. What do you say?"

"The library..."

"If you were the mayor, you could set the library's budget," Ruby said. "You could hire a weekend librarian. You could, I don't know, put in surround sound or something. Please? Let's take care of Storybrooke."

"Okay," she said before she even had a chance to think. Quite the undertaking, she thought, stuffing her hands in her pockets as they walked back into town. She took in the main street the way she took it in the very first time she'd walked it, in a hospital gown, unable to recognize a traffic light, a car, a parking meter. The gravel stabbed her feet, her slippers useless, but she'd savored the paint, so grateful to be outside. This narrow, small-town street had been a vast space waiting to be explored, each shop a deep cavern.

A mayor should feel that way about a town, she felt, straightening her back, and a project would definitely help her adjust to Rumple being gone. Well, she'd better think of a few ideas before the next town hall meeting.

* * *

"Here. This is what I wanted to show you." Ruby flipped on the lights to the sheriff's office.

"Why do you have keys?"

"I worked here, temporarily. Emma had the key copied for me. This way." She all but broke into a run to the filing cabinet. Sorting through the manilla files, she opened one up and let it pop onto the desk. A black-and-white photo of an older man caught Belle's attention. Strong features, a prominent crease between his eyebrows gave off an authoritative, competent impression.

"I've seen him before," she said.

"That's the district attorney, Spencer here. He was King George in the Enchanted Forest, David's step, uh, kind of step, slash, adoptive father."

Belle picked up the file.

"He's the man who framed you."

"No one knows where he is. David looked for him. Emma looked for him, and then it was just one thing after another. Slipped under the radar. I want to find him, Belle. He's Storybrooke's only wanted man, he killed Billy, he framed me and tried to ruin one of my friends. Now's as good a time as any to pick the search back up." Biting her lip, she glared back at the photo. "I don't think we can arrest him, though. Kind of need a badge for that."

Belle paced the office, remembering pacing the same way around Granny's the first time she'd stepped into it. She'd read the menu posted over the kitchen over and over but had hesitated to order anything for so long she feared she'd be asked to leave. She'd settled on iced tea since it sounded the simplest. People had called her brave, and even Belle would concede that many of her decisions had been brave, but it didn't come naturally. Every time she had to build herself up for it, that it was the right thing, the thing a hero would do, do the brave thing and bravery would follow. Ruby's bravery, although sometimes Belle believed it was more bravado, came naturally to her. They'd hit it off right away, but she felt at times she was the one being coaxed into everything, the naysayer. No more, she decided.

"I'm sure there's an extra badge around here somewhere," she sang in a coy whisper, taking a seat in the chair and rifling through the drawers of the desk.

"Still got to find him, though." Ruby folded her arms. "I guess in the movies the first thing the private eye does is go to some seedy dive and start asking around, but I don't know many low-lives. Do you?"

A grin spread across Belle's face.

"I don't. But Lacey does."

* * *

The Rabbit Hole offered walls discolored by cigarette smoke, billiard tables with little rips in the felt, and a coin-operated jukebox with nothing later than 1985 in it. And yet, as Lacey, she'd held some affection for it. In its own way, she supposed, it was a place without judgment. Anyone, even a recently released patient with a new penchant for skimpy clothes, could find a place here. And she did like shooting pool.

Her dress this afternoon would make pool impossible, she thought, once again tugging at the red skirt hugging her thighs.

"Hey, Lacey," Johnny, the cherubic bartender, her favorite bartender, greeted her when she slid onto a stool. She ordered a cocktail and sipped, her system more adjusted to booze than she would have liked. In her kingdom, one of her governesses, Mabel, would close (and begin) the day with some gin. Too young to understand anything except her governess giggling more and colliding into the furniture, she never mentioned anything to anyone until the day Mabel staggered to the stable mumbling something about riding off into the sunset. She ran to her father as fast as her legs could carry her and the next thing she knew, Mabel had been dismissed with advertisements for another governess dispersed through the kingdom.

Rumpelstiltskin's relationship with magic and power seemed to be the same kind of thing. At least he worked on it, though. She had seen the determination in him, knew that if anyone could break an addiction, he could. Her fingers danced around the rim of her glass.

"What ails you?" Johnny asked.

"Nothing. Nothing now that you're talking to me," she said, leaning forward to tussle his hair. She reached into her purse and pulled out the photo. "You see a lot of people."

"A lot of the same people."

"Have you ever seen this man?" She passed the photo to him.

"Once or twice, not so much now. Used to see him about, oh, five months ago. He'd come in here and take some whiskey, not talk to anybody, and then head out." He laughed a little and handed it back to her. "Mr. Gold dump you and you're on the rebound? There are plenty of guys here that wouldn't turn you down."

"Let's just say I have a thing for guys with power," she said. "That's the district attorney." She tapped the photo with her fingernails. Fire engine red, the bottle had said, to match the life-cinching skirt.

"Is it? Hang on, let me see that again." Johnny held the photo up to his face and squinted, leaving Belle to debate mentioning an optometrist. "It is. Wow. That's the guy who was going to remove the sheriff or the stand-in for the sheriff or something?"

"Really?" Belle folded her arms and rested them on the counter.

"Yeah, he's, he's a real piece of work, Lacey, maybe more so than Mr. Gold."

"Oh, I doubt that."

"No, I remember now. He was in the paper for killing a guy, a mechanic, I think. You do yourself a favor and start flirting with one of these sorry asses in here. Sleazy, sure, but murder-free." He turned his back to her to wipe the inside of a stein.

"Johnny, do you know where he is now?"

"Lacey..."

"Please? It's not every day I get the chance to meet a district attorney. Just look how strong that chin looks!"

"Look," he sighed, and Belle could see by the way his eyes darted to and fro before approaching her that she'd won. "He was asking if I thought the nuns would take him in."

She blinked. "The, the nuns? Are you sure?"

"Well, he'd have nowhere else to go. He could go to them, claim sanctuary. That's a thing!" he said in a defensive tone. Belle threw up her hands with the palms out as a sign to take it easy. Nuns? Confident she could chug the remainder of her cocktail, she drew her head back and took a strong swig, wincing at the bitterness. Thank you, Rumple, not only for bringing me back, but probably for saving my liver in the process.

"Thanks, Johnny. There's a man I want to see."

* * *

Ruby loved the crisp Maine air, an extended autumn, the fall's clothes, the leaves crunching underneath her feet...paws, all the encroaching holidays. But cold bleachers with nothing between them and her skin but jeans and a quilt, her gloved hands all but groping a Styrofoam cup full of hot chocolate, sent visions of Maui and Tahiti and other tropical places to her mind.

"Sorry high school football is the best Storybrooke can offer," Victor said, coming back from the bathroom. She smiled at him, her beret slipping down to her eyebrow. They'd met for lunches together a few times since the night they'd sat together on the bridge, a talk about monsters rejuvenating both of them. So this, Ruby thought, could technically be dating, and as intimate as him wiggling in underneath the quilt with her was, as...heart-fluttering as that was...it had nothing on the day before the last full moon. He'd called her at the diner and asked if she'd like some company when she changed this time.

Halftime about to end, three minutes according to the scoreboard, she concentrated on the march the band belted out on the field, trying to remember if she'd heard it before. If she looked at him, the memory of him sitting in the empty diner, his leg jiggling the only giveaway he was nervous, flooded her mind. _I trust you_, he'd said, so casual it registered as suspicious. _It'll be important to see it. For science. If I ever get sued for malpractice, maybe I could call in a favor? _She'd laughed in mid-transformation for the first time.

Blushing and staring down at her shoes, she jolted. He'd been watching her, and not the creepy once-over looks she'd catch him pulling during the curse. This—in transformation she could feel her pupils dilate, her heart rate escalating, every pore sprouting fur—she kissed him. His hands cupping her face, her body warmed degree by degree.

* * *

**A/N: I'm not going to change narrators too much for the Storybrooke plot. You'll be reading from either Belle or Ruby's point of view for those as I felt giving EVERYBODY a narrative would be too much of an undertaking. Thank you for reading.**


	6. Five

**A/N: Based on whose perspective it is, the names may possibly change. Snow will be Snow, for example, but if it is Emma's perspective, she may think of her as Mary Margaret, for example. With the exception of Emma and Henry doing it, I really hate when the characters on the show refer to other people using their curse identities and I try to avoid that, but it may come up every once in a while as part of characterization. I hope it's not confusing.**

* * *

_"He's perfect!" Tears streamed down Regina's face as she held the baby. The depth of a baby's piercing blue eyes rivals even the blue of the ocean, she thought, holding out her hand with her fingers spread. His little hand pressed against hers. Perfection. _

_ "Do you have a name picked out?"_

_ The Social Services man...Spite? No, Slight. How appropriate for a bureaucrat. He'd lingered far longer than she'd wanted him to, standing there grinning._

_ "Yes. Henry."_

_ "Henry Mills," he repeated in a slimy tone. Raising an eyebrow, Regina held Henry closer to her. "So...mayor."_

_ "Yes." What was it about the people from this land? So devoted to their small talk. It was as if they were all afraid to ever learn anything about anyone. _

_ "No plans on moving then, in the near future?"_

_ "Is that a standard procedure question?" _

_ "Actually, yes. We check up on new parents for the first few weeks, especially with a baby. Didn't the man I spoke to on the phone...Mr. Gold, mention that?"_

_ "Mr. Gold and I aren't what you would consider chummy," she said, half-turning towards the house, kicking a few autumn leaves off of the walkway, hoping he'd take a hint. "No, no plans to leave and I have a nurse coming, so if that will be all..."_

_ "Well, Miss Mills-"_

_ "Mayor Mills."_

_ "Of course. My apologies. The boy's fingerprints? New clerk back at the home office. Would forget her own head if it wasn't attached to her."_

_ Regina gaped at Mr. Slight. Car seat between them, they stood on her walkway with the wind blowing more and more with him taking out his fingerprint kit like a kid in those junior detective things. Sneering, she thought of asking him if he'd remembered his magnifying glass and decoder ring, but Henry's gurgling stopped her. It didn't take as long as she'd expected for him to fingerprint him._

_ "Could I have a copy of that?" she asked. _

_ "Sure, you can. Hey, Storybrooke, Maine is what you'd consider a...safe place?"_

_ "We discussed all this after Mr. Gold recommended your state to me. I doubt we would have come this far if you were still doubting this would be a good home for him."_

_ "Just double checking." He winked and with two fingers, gave her a half-salute before departing._

* * *

Regina stood in the galley, lifting her hands at the empty barrels and cupboards, her eyes closed in concentration. Conjuring every image of what a well-stocked kitchen would look like, canned fruit materialized on a shelf in the pantry, each can enchanted to replace itself after use. Burners appeared at an open counter space. Cans of vegetables, bottles of spices, an oven, a freezer—each item able to replace itself once taken out for however long they needed. It made her grimace at first, a queen demoted to short order cook, but after twenty-eight years of clipping recipes out of magazines and marveling at how the chefs on the television whipped up what they did, she had learned that food could be the quickest way to bring one's morale up or down, and they would need morale.

At night they would be docking at another island, this one full of huts and what looked like temple ruins. Surely someone there would have seen Henry or heard something. She would go, come hell or high water.

Opening one of the coolers, she opened a can of pizza dough and began rolling it out on a baking sheet. Henry used to love making pizza with her. She'd made it their Friday evening activity. Early on, she'd realized that being the mayor of a town she had complete control over could be as easy or as demanding as she wanted it to be, and since it was her curse and her town, she worked to keep it at the level she wanted. Friday evenings, she cleared her schedule and would go into the kitchen with Henry and roll out dough. They'd done it together even back when he went through his "no sauce" phase. She would fry up sausage while he spread shredded cheese and, once he was a little older, ripe red tomato slices and juicy strips of bell peppers. Within nine minutes, dinner.

If there was any consolation to be found, she thought, it was knowing that Greg and Tamara and whoever required they take Henry would treat him well. He was a hostage, a commodity, and the only positive thing about that was that they would keep him alive as long as they needed him to be. If he struggled or mouthed off, and she was certain he would, they might hurt him, but not enough to damage him.

She would know. She'd dangled countless people's lives in front of others, some days even forgetting she had so-and-so's heart or so-and-so languishing in a cell.

See, this is why everyone needs a hot piece of pizza, she told herself. She could take, had taken, but she could nurture, too.

* * *

Seahorses looked different here, Emma thought, alone in an alcove of the ship, head in her arms. Any other scenario, any at all, and she would have packed a camera. More bulbous than ones she'd seen at aquariums, their snouts resembled bottle-nosed dolphins more than any horse. They must have been marine mammals here. They played in a small group the way dolphins played, bobbing up and over, their tiny tails wiggling underneath them when they flipped out of the water and back in again. If only Henry's book contained an illustration of the sights here.

Blinking back tears...she was not going to cry in broad daylight with everyone around...she sat back down and plopped her hands into her lap, trying to think up what could best occupy her time until dropping anchor, when the corner of her eye caught Hook approaching.

"Seahorses," he said, pointing out at them. "They breathe the air and the sea."

"Thanks for the wildlife trivia." She paused, her arms bracing the seat. "They're not just one more thing that attacks people around here, right?"

"Those?" One let out a high squeak and threw itself back under the water in response. Well played, seahorse, she thought. He stood with his back against the ship, staring off into space. She'd seen him sulk before, the long interludes on the beanstalk when she refused to talk to him, but that wasn't what this was. She stared back out, hoping the seahorses were still playing, when she heard it. At first, she thought it was the wind carrying out an echo. Ghosts of songs stretching out over the sea seemed about right for this place, but no. He was singing to himself, mumbled and a bit slurred, but singing. Reluctantly, she found herself listening more carefully than she'd wanted to make out the words.

"Most chivalrous fish of the ocean/to ladies forbearing and mild/though his record be dark/is the man-eating shark/who will eat neither woman nor child."

So, she thought, when not flirting or vowing revenge, Captain Hook sings dark-humored kid songs. Scintillating.

"I can readily cite you an instance/where a lovely young lady of Breem/who was tender and sweet/and delicious to eat/fell into the bay with a scream."

"Kid song?" she interrupted, stopping it before it went the old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly route.

"Sea shanty...not much of a difference sometimes, though," he said with a laugh. Smiling down at the deck, he lifted his head back up and hummed it to the water.

At first glance, the cruelest part of her mind observed, he didn't belong. The rest of them, for all their long and drawn-out differences and disagreements...there's an understatement...were a family, all united by Henry. Hook had said nothing more of his reasons since Storybrooke and, for fear that she would walk in on him and Gold fighting to the death one day, she'd kept that book closed, not interested in finding pages she found too complicated or dark for what needed done.

"Is this about more than Henry? You volunteering to come?" That naughty...understatement again...grin conveyed pure amusement. Raising that one eyebrow a mile high, he swaggered closer to her.

"Sing me a song and maybe I'll tell you."

"I don't sing in front of people."

"No, you wouldn't." He looked her up and down. "Well, if you'd like another verse, 'she struggled and flounced in the water/and signaled in vain for her bar...'"

"It's not going to be very loud," she sighed. At least it was passing the time.

"Good. So then I'll have to listen closely." In one swift movement, he was sitting in the alcove next to her with rapt attention.

Had Emma been completely oblivious to his past treacheries, she might have fallen into this trap. The man had eyes the exact color of forget-me-nots, icy or warm depending on the situation, framed by the long thick lashes some women tortured themselves trying to get. So if she kept her eyes on the ocean, she could handle it.

"Long afloat on shipless oceans/I did all my best to smile," she sang in hushed tones, praying she didn't lose control of her voice. It didn't have to be perfect, she reminded herself, and Tim Buckley sang it better than she ever could anyway. "Till your singing eyes and fingers/drew me loving to your isle/and you sang/'sail to me'/'sail to me'/'let me enfold you...'" Any more and her voice would quiver, eyes glued to the horizon or not. "'Here I am'/here I am'/waiting to hold you.'" Clearing her throat, she shrugged. "A guy sings it, so..."

"A siren?" Mild surprise on his face, the corner of her squinted eye told her. With something, damn, something sincere.

"We have songs about the sea, too."

"I hadn't heard that one before," he said, with enough sincerity that she did turn her head in his direction, his smile almost contagious. "You sail around as long as I have and a new song becomes rarer and rarer, even if you cross lands." There was a beat, long enough of one for her to tuck her lips into her mouth, shielding them from his gaze. "A land without magic. Is living in it all the time as boring as it sounds?"

"Answer the question first," she warned, the same warning tone she would give Henry when he tried to puppy-dog-eye her into giving in.

"I came because I knew Baelfire," he said, quick and casual but with a pained look on his face. "Briefly, but well enough to want to do right by his child."

That, that...it was one of those conversations she'd had with just about everyone in the last year that left her wanting to just reel back and forth in a full tub with the door locked behind her with "it's too much" as her mantra. For someone who felt she'd never had much of a childhood, why was she suddenly always the youngest person around?

"Do you need to lower your head between your legs and breathe?" Yep, add slapping Hook to the day's agenda before they reached the next island. Finally something close to alarm spread over his face. "Emma, do something to put some color back in your face."

"I won't ask how..." When she felt young, she felt like a pawn, and when she felt like a pawn, she felt like she was sitting helpless in a hospital bed having the only good thing in her life ripped out of her arms, willingly, and taken away to someone else. She did not lower her head between her legs, but she did balance it in her hands with her elbows on her knees for the count of three, eyes closed.

"So...what?" She brought her face up, confident to look at his without faltering. "You help rescue Henry and that's it, no next step?"

"Rescue Henry and go home. See? There was another step." He grinned again at her.

"And just where is home for you now? If..." Shut up, Emma, she warned herself. You're not here to fix anyone. "If you're just trading one obsession for another, and this one's not going to take however long you've been around or whatever, because we will find him, you'll still have nothing left."

She'd won for a second, watching him be taken aback and his lashes flutter at an array of answers that probably danced in front of him.

"You're going to question the motivation of the person who got you this far?" was his cool question. "That's rather stupid of you since he's your son."

"Which is why I've put off asking and making sure you're not going to flay Gold before we even have a way to get back-"

"Nice to know you believe I could do it." He winked.

"I know what desperate, dying-inside people are capable of," she said.

"Well," he breathed. "Perhaps I'm hoping all our lives will be destroyed in the process, that we'll fail and the very last sight I'll see is that of Rumpelstiltskin's eyes going still, that all this is in vain and is just a more elaborate, more romantic way to die." His eyes on her lips again. Their bodies closer than she ever would have felt comfortable with. She steadied herself.

"I don't believe that."

"Then don't ask me those questions," he purred at her, sliding further away from her on the seat. He didn't leave, which, no, she stopped herself again. Don't analyze. Don't fix. He wants a wall there, then it's best that there is. She knew how unsettling having someone try to scale one of her walls could be. Their eyes burned holes into the water out before them.

"She doesn't die," Hook added. "The shark rescues her and sees her safely to a dinghy the skipper lowered himself into. He does eat the skipper, however." He gave her a warmer smile than she'd expected, but, even with him farther away than he had been only a minute ago, that come-hither look he gave her at times caused her a self-loathing shiver. He turned and tromped up the steps behind them to the helm.

* * *

"Try it," Regina said, bringing a plate up to Hook at the helm. Everyone else stood on the deck, silently chewing. She'd read up on other cultures when she'd first started cooking for herself. Hearty conversation and slurping were meant as compliments to the chef in some places; others, quiet, methodical dining. Besides, she thought, it could be a comfort of home for most of them.

"What the bloody hell is it?"

"It's pizza. It's not poisoned."

"Is it melting?"

He hadn't stayed at her house long. Mother hadn't even been able to stay at the house long, but she really should have immersed them in the Land Without Magic more. Still, it was always nice to know something another didn't.

"The cheese on it is melted, yes. Come on, now. You can eat it with one hand."

"Amusing."

"Hook, I plan on stepping onto this island and look as long as it takes. You have to go with me and whoever else goes since you have been here before. You can do it on an empty stomach, or have at least one piece to tie you over."

He reached for it with his good hand, hooked one still on the wheel. Smirking, Regina placed the slice in his hand and chuckled inside watching him observe how the others ate it before taking a bite.

He devoured it.

"Good to know you're pulling your weight around here," he uttered, licking his lips. "Be a dear now and prepare for docking."

"Right then." Leaning over the rail, she cringed realizing that of the four of them, she preferred Emma accompanying them. "Emma, we'll be there soon." A little wave answered her as Emma finished her piece.

"Well, wait." Gods, a little late to play the overprotective dad, aren't we, Charming? "The three of you are going? Emma, you can help guard the ship."

"If there's even the slightest chance Henry's on this island, I'm going."

"And there's no way I'm not going," Regina added, smirking. Really? They'd plotted out this arrangement during the last search, three search, three mind the ship in case the mermaids followed them.

"I could go, too," Snow said, hoisting a quiver of arrows over her shoulder.

"And leave only the grandpas to fend for themselves? Gold would run out of magic so fast it would make your head spin." This was rich, she thought. "And I doubt your husband would leave you and Gold alone to defend the ship by yourselves."

"Relax, guys," Emma said. "All it'll be is we ask a few questions, get a few leads, and then hightail it out of here." Making her way further down the deck nearer to the bow, she crossed her arms and cocked her head at the tiny island. "Something tells me Henry won't be on this one."

Quite the discouraging day when she and Emma Swan felt the same way about anything, Regina thought.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I got the idea for the seahorses' design from _Jake and the Neverland Pirates. _They're adorable! "The Chivalrous Shark" is a real song and not as old as one may think, but it was exactly the kind of song I wanted to use and I do not own it or Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," which is hauntingly gorgeous and worth a listen.**


	7. Six

The island smelled like lemons, Killian noted, setting foot on the spongy soil. Lemons and oranges and rain. Although it had been years, centuries, since he'd traversed this particular island, he led the way, the starlight once again bathing every thick tree and bush in a faint silver-purple glow. Now would be the time for some rollicking little tune to pass the time, he thought, if not for the ever-growing feeling it would disturb the island somehow.

"Why is this one inhabited and the previous ones weren't?" Regina asked behind him, heaving just a fraction while they made their way up a slope.

"The fruits, I'd imagine," he said, pausing a moment to snag a lime the size of his hand from a low-hanging branch. "Care to partake?" He tossed it to Regina, who dodged it and let it splatter onto the hill.

"Watch it," Swan scolded, bringing up the rear.

"We were just debating whether or not these delightful little things warranted eating." Her nose wrinkled at the mess on the ground.

"It's probably one of those things where if you eat the fruit you're stuck here," she muttered. Imaginative, if morbid notion. "Maybe you guys can debate about the next one without me having to worry about them flying at my head."

"Oh please," Regina scoffed. "All we're doing is walking."

"And searching."

"Yes, two things, walking and searching. Now I would ask you to please stop talking, but that would be three things and I'm not sure you're capable of that," Regina snapped. Killian couldn't resist glancing back to see Swan's reaction. Mild annoyance and a shake of the head, realizing the insult wasn't worth her time. Ah, the high road.

Scattered twig huts came into view, all forming a zigzagged path towards the temple, a stone labyrinth not tall, but long, like a serpent winding its way around the land. The fireflies seemed to prefer the huts.

"Shouldn't we be knocking on these doors, asking some questions?" Swan called to him, not to Regina, but him.

"Start at the top of the hill and work our way down," he said. Nothing? No arguing? Something seemed a tad off.

"Emma?" Regina called. Killian spun around to find only the two of them. Swan had disappeared.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I heard a shuffle and when I turned around she was gone. Emma!"

"Swan?" Even centuries couldn't expel the dread of disappearing, of all of them vanishing one by one into the night. Something seized at him, his blood drawing cold. If...would Henry even want to leave if Emma...

"I'm...okay," he finally heard.

"Where are you?" he hissed at the muffled grunt of a response. She sounded far away and close by at the same time.

"I'm...uh, down here?"

They crept off the path into the tall grass where a sudden drop-off into a trench awaited them. There she was, a bit of grass in her hair, but in one piece. Feeling like a fever broke, he laughed, the smudges of dirt on her trousers the extent of her fall.

"Let's bring you up out of there." He started when Regina caught his arm.

"No, lower me."

"You can't lift her out."

"No, but I can't lift you and her out," she said.

"Wait." Swan stood with her arm out, staring in the direction of the temple. "This goes up to that temple. I can just follow it there."

"Here." Regina crouched onto the ground and scooted with an awkward precision down to the trench. "Hook, you can meet us up there."

Hook, do this. Hook, do that, always someone's lap dog, he winced, considering rolling down in with them out of spite. Convenient at times, certainly, but so constraining, leaving one without chances to feel worry, fear, relief—sometimes in a ten-second span. It left nothing but resentment, resentment at their power, resentment at their potency. He'd wanted to feel for Regina when she told him of Cora's passing, but all he could really muster had been the generic polite sympathy given to anyone who might lose a mother. He'd hated Cora, that she had so much and squandered it all, that and her magic. He was a practical-enough man to not have a problem with magic per se, but its prices were too high even for him. Magic took from him without him ever even using it-his father, Milah, Bae... An empty, empty life, he thought again.

The trench broke off into two near the temple wall, one path to the left that looked like it had been sealed off long ago and a path to the right. Onward then, he told himself, spying the path resembled a tunnel more and more, an underground stone entrance to the temple itself. If the trench led right in, what had really been the point of the path, he wondered. Following the snaky wall around, it came to a heavy wooden door. All that remained now was for them to come out.

"Hook."

"Ah!" A ball of yellow light the size of a fist hovered so close to his face he blinked. "Do you mind taking it back a few notches, Tink? Sensitive eyes."

The little fairy acquiesced, but crossed her legs and glared at him. Fairies being so small they can only contain one feeling at a time, he braced himself for an assault.

"Just out taking in the moonlight?" she spat, matching the sound of tinkling of bells from far away. "Just up and leave Neverland without saying goodbye to a soul only to turn up later whenever you want?"

"I thought short and sweet to be best, lest a woman see me cry." How exactly had she ever expected them to work, anyway? Her entire leg was half the size of one of his fingers. Besides, he had heard enough horror stories from acquaintances who had had crazy former lovers that drove them mad, and not in a good way. Tinkerbell, miniscule beauty that she was, could have torn those crazy lasses to shreds.

"What are you doing here? Looking for a crew?"

"In a way, yes." He'd backed up against the door, only to feel a nudge. Fumbling around behind him, he flipped the lock, hoping Swan and Regina would take the hint. Clearing his throat, he tried to speak louder and still sound natural. "I'm looking for a boy, actually, taking him back to his mother."

"Then you're missing out," she sang, doing a spin for him. The leaves covered as little of her as they did before.

"He wouldn't have been here very long," he continued. "About eleven years old, brown hair."

"Yes, yes, the one on the main island."

Fighting the instinct to smile at gained information, he raised an eyebrow to show surprise.

"The main island? Why?"

"You know how Peter is. One minute so focused on one thing and the next all over the place, flying across moons." She wagged a finger at him, the rage being channeled into playing the coquette. "Of course you'd want the one boy impossible to take."

"And why is that?"

"This is the boy the Lost Ones have been looking for, the boy of the prophecy. You, you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?" Flying over, she ran a tiny hand through his hair. It gave Killian the sensation of a gnat flying too close. "Have you even seen Peter Pan?"

"By all accounts, I should have," he said with a shrug.

"A rare male fairy. Eyes just a little bit bluer than yours. Everyone thinks fairies have so much power, but we're so small, it's contained. It takes up so much energy. A human body, now, that's something different. We'd have all taken one a long time ago, but they don't withstand magic so well."

The door no longer thudded against his back. Perhaps that meant they were listening.

"You're not making much sense, Tink. Recall it's been a while since I've been here."

She rolled her eyes with a groan.

"Hook, everybody that's been here has had too weak a body for Peter to take. He sends the shadows out looking for one a little stronger, one that has magic in it. It's said, the prophecy, I mean, that there will be a boy who will come from True Love itself. That is the kind of body that could inhabit something like Peter."

"How's he know he has the right boy?" he asked.

"He had a vision. Centuries ago. You said you knew the mother. Is he wrong?" Tinkerbell almost gloated, so proud, so condescending, someone who had just been chomping at the bit to relay this to anyone ignorant of it.

"Suppose, just a thought, True Love hadn't been involved in his...origins," he settled on. Not wanting to talk about a past love, he could understand, too well, but denying having loved at all as Swan had done opened a floodgate of suspicions regarding the nature of her relationship with Henry's father...Baelfire. Once again, something he preferred not to think about. "Suppose his mother and father had not had True Love. That would sound like the wrong boy to me."

"That doesn't matter," Tink laughed. "The mother is the product of True Love itself. Anyone that she happens to love, anyone that happens to love her, such as a child, would have far more to them than anyone could guess. But the father, oh, you want to hear something juicy?"

Bloody hell, he wasn't sure he could hear anymore of anything.

"Always," he whispered, giving his voice a husky tone that incited a giggle.

"The father is the son of the Dark One, the most powerful entity in the realms. At least, for now. With his grandson at stake, all Peter has to do is twist the boy's arm here and there and the Dark One would work for him. Whole worlds would be at his mercy. The Most Powerful Magic of All frosted with dark magic more potent than anything here..." she trailed off, flipping around clapping her hands together.

"And nothing about an immature, childish fairy taking over worlds alarms you." It was not a question.

"Better than how things are now!" Tink cried, defensive all of a sudden. "You think I can get any sleep with those children crying night after night? It's about time he made an army of them. Do yourself a favor and count this one as lost, Hook."

"And what do I tell his mother?" he swallowed, wondering why he hadn't heard at least one of them slump to the floor in a faint on the other side of the door.

"Tell her he'll be Peter's once he returns." With that, she flew off, nothing more than a streak of light across the blackness. He didn't dare unlock the door until every trace of her light vanished into the night.

There had been too many days in a row of just standing around like a bloody idiot not knowing what to do. Regina had backed herself up against the temple wall, silently crying. Swan staggered out, gripping his coat with a weak wrist.

"Promise me," she whispered, her face and eyes lost. He didn't like frantic Emma, when her hazel-green eyes sparked gold flecks. Her bottom lip fell open, but no words.

"We will find him," he uttered back. We understand each other, she'd said. At the time, it was with reluctance that he agreed. Now, now it seemed a saving grace that nothing more required stating. "No need to question anyone," he said, summoning up some strength in his voice. "Back to the ship."

Heads held high, a good sign, he thought, this time deciding to be the one to bring up the rear. The wind whistled through the trees, the citrus scent wafted around them, along with a rustling. A patterned rustling, like footsteps, crunched a fallen leaf here and there. Killian drew his sword.

A shadow pounced out from the trees with a sword. It wasn't until he blocked it with his own and heard the clang he realized this wasn't the literal shadow minions. This was flesh and underneath flesh was always blood. From the corner of his eye, he could make out flashes of color and movement, Emma and Regina rushing to him, but they needn't bother, he thought. The opponent's style was that of a novice, choppy, a clear distinction made between the sword and the arm. Able to take the offensive, he kicked at the figure's gut, sending his bottom to the ground with a grunt. The sword thudded down next to him, the clangs still thrumming in Killian's ears.

"Hold him down!" he heard Emma yell to Regina, who lifted her hand and clenched a fist. Ropes entwined the hooded figure's waist and arms.

"Bad form, mate," he said, crouching down next to him. "You knew who you were fighting. At least grant me that." He brushed the hood off the man without much struggling.

Greg...Owen, that sleepy-eyed, puffed up man from the Land Without Magic, refused to make eye contact with him, instead choosing to try burning a hole into the ground with his eyes.

Regina interlocked her fingers and nested them under her chin, closing her eyes as if she were struggling to restrain herself. Emma made no such reservations, though, the effect of not being the one tortured by him, marched up, and promptly kicked him in the face.

"What did you do with him?" she bellowed. Her whole body tensed as she backed away from him. Blood dripped from the corner of Greg's mouth.

"Let's get him onto the ship," Regina suggested, and for once, he was inclined to agree.

"Magic us there," he added.

"Why?" Emma snapped, circling Greg like a vulture. "He can answer our questions here and we can leave him here." With her hands on her knees, she bent down to him.

"Come on now, lass, kicking him in the face is only going to feel less and less satisfying."

"Emma, a hostage may come in handy," Regina said. Wholly unnatural, he thought, that one of them flying off the handle made the other a picture of calm.

"No, we can do this now!" she screamed, nearing Greg enough to bite his nose off if she so wished.

"I think only her parents may be able to hold her back, Regina," he said, not taking his eyes off her, unsure if Emma With Murderous Rage was something he was ready to see in her. "Magic. Now."

* * *

**A/N: Okay, lots of exposition in this chapter, but it is necessary. Coming up? Snow's perspective on the new captive, new clues, and her family in general.**


	8. Seven

They tied him below in the hull, where only the strongest rays of light streamed in through a random slat here and there. Chains and crates kept him company, a bucket for...whatever he may need it for, scraps of food—Snow would say this for this odd assortment of crew, they did know how to treat prisoners.

She volunteered to question him, or rather, the process of elimination volunteered for her. She had heard of Rumpelstiltskin and Hook's methods of interrogation, had experienced Regina's, and neither Charming nor Emma seemed capable of restraint at the moment. Emma had retreated into Snow's bunk immediately after they'd appeared on the ship and pulled Henry's book out of the backpack. The studious tunnel-vision wrinkles on her forehead warned Snow to address her later.

So she sat on another bucket in this dark belly of the Jolly Roger with the man whose life they had spent an entire night hoping to save. Allowing herself to wring her hands and wonder if that had been the smartest choice or if hindsight was in fact twenty-twenty, she exhaled and smiled.

"Greg."

He jolted at the sudden noise before staring down at the floor again.

"Greg, we welcomed you to Storybrooke. You were the first outsider..." Bad word choice, Snow, she winced. "...in a long time, and we were so worried you wouldn't make it after your crash. We hadn't done anything to you. Whatever happened exactly between you and Regina and your father...Greg, she killed my father, too."

His face gazed into hers, a searching expression, trying to read if she was being straight with him.

"I don't know the circumstances of how that happened to yours, but all I know is sometimes even those horrible things have to be pushed aside when something even bigger is at stake. Henry is my grandson. I don't know how much you know about our lives, Greg, but I never had the chance to see my daughter grow up. I always thought that at least I would get that chance with Henry and any other children she may have down the road." Taking his silence as a sign he was listening, that just maybe the words were getting through, she leaned forward and held his hand in both of hers. "Henry is a smart, observant, fun boy. He reads comic books, collects clocks, and is getting pretty good with a wooden sword. Please. Please give him back to us."

His mouth fell open, lips cracked. Unable to guess what he would say, still afraid he would deny her any information, she held his hand tighter.

"We're from different lands, I know, and magic, magic takes some getting used to. But we're not so different. I mourned my father the way you mourned yours. I worry for Henry the way you might worry about someone you love. I love...we all love, the way anyone from your world may love."

"I, I don't have him anymore," he coughed.

"Whatever you can tell me."

"It was supposed to just be about finding what happened to my father." He grimaced in such a way Snow blinked, hoping he did not have to use his bucket.

"I'm listening, Greg."

"Owen."

"Owen."

"The Lost Ones have him, on the main island. Tamara is one of them."

"Is that who you work for then?" she asked.

"I worked for an organization that strove to rid our world of you vermin!" he moaned. "Magic ruined my life. I didn't have my mom. I didn't have my dad. Do you have any idea how it feels to grow up in the system? To go from one foster family to another?"

Snow gulped, tears beginning to sting her eyes.

"I finally had friends. I fell in love. I was closing in on the woman who took my father from me!" His arms moved within the ropes, would have punched something if they'd been free. "And then everything changed. They wanted Henry. I thought it was for experiments. I don't think there's another kid that was born in our world but to people not from our world." He shook his head, unleashing a desperate laugh. "As soon as we got here, Tamara showed him to the Lost Ones."

"That's who she works for?"

"That's who they worship. Pan. The whole damn time, working for Peter freakin' Pan!" he wailed, tears gushing down his cheeks. With her sleeve wrapped over her hand, she stepped up and wiped his face.

* * *

"Hey."

Emma didn't answer, turning a page in the book instead. Her fingers ran across the page like a typewriter, ensuring she didn't miss a word.

"I came to see if you needed any help doing what it is you're doing." Snow crawled onto the foot of the bed across from where Emma sat Indian-style, the book between them.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for." She all but swatted at a strand of her own hair falling into her face. "I can barely think. Henry must be so scared..."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Well, I was looking through here for anything about Neverland to start with, and then it turned into needing to know more about the fairies since it turns out Peter Pan isn't just some kid with issues." Emma paused to massage her temples. "What's the difference between 'fairy' and 'fae?' I see both words in here."

"There's no difference, really, except in context. Fairies are kind, helpful little creatures and faes just sort of, uh, screw with people."

"Screw..."

"Mischief makers," Snow clarified. "Impish things, like the stories where they get you lost in the forest on purpose."

"Fantastic," Emma heaved. She turned the page. They peered down and read, Snow taking longer due to upside-down words. Out of nowhere, Emma gasped.

"What? What is it?"

"You gave the book to Henry," she said.

"Yes?"

"Where did you get it?"

"I..." Snow bit her lip, eyes darting all over the small cabin for an answer. "I don't know. I remember, I remember it just being on my bookshelf the day I decided Henry should have it."

"Did anyone say anything to you, planted the idea in your head to give it to him?" It sounded like Emma already had some idea of what happened, or was puzzling together a story of some sort. Unfortunately for all of them, implanted memories weren't easily sorted from true ones.

"All I know is that once Henry was in my class, it was like he'd always been in my class," she said with a tilt of the head. "He seemed so lonely that I got home and saw the book on my shelf and thought, 'That is what will give him hope.'"

"Well, there's no way Regina's responsible for that," Emma huffed. "The book was the first thing that brought me to his attention-" she trailed off, eyes widening. "They wanted to break the curse."

"Who?"

"Whoever gave you the book. Whoever gave you that knew that once Henry read it, he would know what exactly was going on and what he needed to do!"

Snow snatched the book up and poured the pages to one side to inspect the inside of the front cover. No copyright date, no publishing company, nothing. Not even an author's name.

"But we all had lost our memories. We couldn't remember who we were."

"Jefferson remembered," Emma argued.

"But he also couldn't leave his house until you arrived. No, someone else had to have known the whole time." She found herself wishing for a Storybrooke phone book. "August?"

"According to Neal, August didn't actually go to Storybrooke until after me. No," she sighed. "There has to be someone else. Let's keep looking. Maybe there's a clue in here somewhere...even though we still don't know what we're looking for."

* * *

"Emma, honey," Snow whispered, her eyelids so heavy. "I think we need to save our spot and reconvene in the morning."

"You can go back to your cabin if you're tired," was the retort. Snow sighed, wishing someone had prepared her for getting an adolescent's attitude back.

"You're in my cabin. You came in here for the book and didn't leave."

"Oh." Nodding, she clasped the book, ready to shut it, when she bent her head further down into the illustration. "What's this?"

Snow peered down to a symbol of a crescent moon with a five-pointed star next to it.

"That's the symbol of the fairies," she yawned. "Sometimes the things they influence have that on them."

"It's on the wardrobe," she said, flipping near the end of the book.

"Mmm hmm."

"It's on the stakes holding up the bean crop the giants are growing, too. Look."

"Emma, don't shove the book into my face. I told you, it's like their calling card, their logo. Things become a little more significant when they're magic things."

"But she says in the story, the Blue Fairy says in the story, that it's the last magic tree. Rumpelstiltskin's story isn't in here, but Neal's is and she tells him it is the last magic bean," she said.

"I don't think she was aware Anton and his brothers were still growing them."

"But what's with all this 'last' stuff? Other magic things are being lost and yet her calling card, as you called it, is on everything?" Emma flipped through the book for what must have been the millionth time, her eyes scanning for the symbol.

"Emma. It's time for bed."

"I don't want to go to bed."

"Then go take a shift at the helm or something different. Run laps up and down a corridor, just do something to clear your mind for a few minutes. You're starting to sound like you're accusing Mother Superior of...something."

"It's just, it's just strange, that's all." Snow took advantage of the stillness and ran a few fingers through a strand of Emma's hair.

"We'll talk all this out tomorrow when we come up with a plan for how to invade that island," she said. Relieved Emma was standing, she scooted towards the middle of the bed, ready to lay down and wait for Charming's arms to wrap around her before finally falling asleep. Blinking, she frowned at Emma standing in the doorway. "What's wrong?"

"Thanks for holding me back once we were back on board. I didn't want to lose myself like that with Greg," she chuckled at the floor. "Hook said you guys would have to do that."

"I understand." Staring up at the ceiling, Snow tightened her lips. "Emma? One more thing." She waited until she'd crossed back into the cabin. "When you were little, when boys would pull your hair and push and call you names and all that and you went and told, did a teacher or anyone tell you 'they're doing that because they like you?'"

Deer in the headlights.

"Noooo," Emma said.

"They didn't say that?"

"No, I wasn't a tattletale. We would just fight. And then I'd win." Smiling, she tiptoed back in and kissed her on the cheek, a gentle "goodnight, Mom" following.

The light snuffed from the cabin, she turned onto her side in her bunk, trying to take her own advice about clearing her mind, repeating that Emma can take of herself a few times before nodding off.

* * *

_It's her birthday. Woop-dee-shit, Emma thought, legs stretched over the couch with the ripped leather. Sweatpants-clad legs, too, she rolled her eyes, taking a swig of rum and Coke. Twenty-one and no party, no night on the town with friends squeezing through the sun roof of one of their parents' cars howling down the street. Not for Emma Swan. She prefers a quiet night in a studio apartment on a hand-me-down leather couch that still smells like sex, watching Harry Potter duke it out with a, a, the big giant snake thing...basilisk. Hmm, she thought. The red bird is a phoenix, she tested herself, making sure movies and alcohol were an okay combination. Must be nice to be nothing but cinders and then be reborn into something important and heroic._

_ Her phone rang, probably a work call. Heaving a self-pitying groan, she stomped to the phone._

_ "Hello?"_

_ "Miss Swan? This is Mr. Slight, from Social Services."_

_ "Oh my god, did, did something happen to my s-"_

_ "No, nothing like that."_

_ Not your son, she reminded herself. He's someone else's. When no clarifying answer from his end arrived, she raised an eyebrow and decided this needed a take-charge approach._

_ "Well, what is it?"_

_ "I just wanted to make sure we could reach you. We check on the birth parents every now and then."_

_ "Why? You said this was a closed adoption. I could be dead in a gutter and there would be no one to traumatize with it." Say that again and you might just pull a swan dive off the window ledge, she warned herself. _

_ "I'm sorry to disturb you, Miss Swan. I just wanted to double check your contact information and ask if you had changed your mind about being involved in the child's life. I take it your answer to the latter is a no? No plans of finding the boy and meeting him any time soon?"_

_ Hanging up, she collapsed onto the couch in time to take in the last few minutes of the movie. What a jackass, she thought. Clearly, the guy had no life if he was still harried with cases from three years ago. It was her life, her choices. Her face crumpling, she dashed to the refrigerator to open another can of Coke, this second one two-thirds rum. Best birthday present right now would be forgetting that call, she thought._


	9. Eight

_ Dear Belle,_

_ I have sinned. I hope you can forgive me. I know how much you disapprove of magic, particularly the uses I have for it, so I hope when you read my words, you will try to understand it truly was a hundred percent for Henry._

_ We pinpointed his location. A miracle, you would say, however it is only thanks to nabbing Greg Mandel, or Owen, or whatever he calls himself. Apparently, the woman he was working with betrayed him and left him to fend for himself in this wretched place. _

_ You can imagine everyone wanted to race to Henry as quickly as possible, but I reminded them that until we had an exit strategy, no one would be going anywhere and we would be at the mercy of the Lost Ones and, if Peter Pan should return sooner than later, an army of shadows. I don't worry about the latter too much since it appears I am the only one who realizes just how easy it will be to defeat them if certain parties on this ship would just stop to think. But the damage they could do in a short amount of time would be substantial. _

_ For all of Neverland's natural beauty, its caverns hold the grandest sight—fairy dust. A happy thought, a light sprinkling, and instant flight. Neverland is only a star to us, but a land to those who have magic. At the risk of sounding stupid, which is a risk I only take with you, I have to wonder if the stories of adults not being able to fly are true. Therefore, we must pilfer enough of it for the ship itself to fly, I told the others. _

_ We anchored and waited until dawn, when the fairies depart the caverns like bats and go about their nature duties. They divide the dew here, keep eggs from falling out of nests and the like. I led the expedition this time, finally. This was not a race against time, simply one requiring numbers and precision, which we had. The ground in the cavern was covered in golden dust, like sand on a beach. I'd spent considerable hours calculating just how much we would need. A little bit can go a long way, but I had never dealt with something as large as a ship before. Again, luck was on our side as we also had several empty sacks in addition to numbers and precision. We spent the morning loading dust into the sacks, hauling them to the ship, storing them as far from our prisoner as possible, and then trekking back to do it all again. Chitchat was thankfully at a minimum, although banter and trading barbs, oh, sweet Belle, did you really think all of us could always resist that temptation every time? So yes, I stole magic, worse than simply using it. Fairy dust and spells, well, it's a common requirement. Imagine having to fill a pantry with essentials, brown sugar or baking powder. _

_ I was the last back aboard the ship, everyone ready to steer towards the main island. It was when I took my sack below decks to the hull that, if you think I did wrong by stealing from the fairies, I made up for it._

_ Regina stood staring down at Greg, who was asleep. She twisted her wrist around and around until she'd summoned a fireball._

_ "Well, well, well, providing him a reading light?" I asked. I still enjoy watching the woman jump._

_ "We know where we're going. We don't need him anymore."_

_ "I thought we'd all had this conversation with Emma not too long ago, dearie."_

_ "She wasn't electrocuted by him," she growled. _

_ "And just what do you think our nobler companions would say when they come down here next and find him burned to a crisp?"_

_ "Oh, don't act high and mighty around me!" she barked. "My son is the one who is missing. He's to blame, and if you hadn't brought the magic back in the first place none of this would have happened." With that, she tossed the fireball in my direction._

_ I caught the fireball, just a perk to being the Dark One, and absorbed it. _

_ "Get out of my way."_

_ "Do you have no concept of leverage, your Majesty? We have a hostage. They have a hostage." Even though it really hadn't, I could feel that fireball clawing up into my face, my ears and cheeks hot from her accusation, having the sensation of flames in my eyes._

_ "His girlfriend rejected him. No one's going to want him. Hostages are only good when they're wanted."_

_ "You would know," I snapped, thinking of you. "Consider him a retired mole then. He can tell us the best ways to enter the island, where to go, who will be where. For once, I'm in agreement with the heroes, dearie. Or do you still always need your son around to make sure you'll do the right thing?"_

_ I walked into that one. I realize that now._

_ "You mean like you?" she spat, stomping back up the deck. _

_ So I did make sure a man's life was spared. That's enough about Neverland. How fares Storybrooke? You know I do miss the shop a little. Rare and hard-to-procure items have always interested me. I will no doubt have to ransack the place when and if we return, just because these shadows have already shown they can travel between worlds without much difficulty. If even the fairy dust cannot get us to Storybrooke, then my only hope of seeing you again is in the Enchanted Forest, provided we find our way there and your lot continues to grow the magic beans. And I must see you again, if for no other reason than to give you my log of this rescue, so you can know just one more time how you mean the world to me. _

_Rumpelstiltskin _

* * *

**A/N: Again, because the letters are short, two chapters this time around.**


	10. Nine

"So this is what a stake-out is like," Belle noted, opening a Styrofoam container of broccoli and cheese soup from Granny's. "What did you tell Granny?"

"Girl's Day Out," Ruby chuckled, blowing across her spoonful before sipping her soup. Her crimson Camaro's seats could adjust until the passenger was just about lying down, which was exactly what they needed. Parked across the street from the convent, they ate without talking, two iced teas in the cup holders between them.

"I missed you, when you were Lacey," Ruby said.

"I missed me, too."

"It feels like the curse is still around in a lot of ways, you know? Snow gone all the time, you were gone, me being one of the few people here that can't hide the magical thing about her."

Belle twisted until she faced her.

"You want to do a fun project in addition to this one?"

"What would that be?" Ruby gave her hopeful eyes.

"Whenever we get bored, we're going to stroll right into that convent, find Nova, and talk her into seeing Dream—uh, Leroy again," she said, finishing her soup with one last lick of her lips. Before her life had truly begun, just another princess in another arranged marriage, she would have politely nodded at anyone's suggestion that one could have such a wonderful friend and yet could count the number of interactions they'd had with them on one hand. Lacey had her advantages at times—no inner voice, dead-set on getting what she wanted—but dying as Lacey made Belle shudder, and Dreamy had thought of her. It was all fitting together, like finding missing pieces of a puzzle, Ruby as the sheriff, Leroy as her deputy, and herself as the caretaker of a town, since caretaker of a "rather large estate" was already under her belt.

Mother Superior exited the convent and stood tapping her foot under the archway, glancing at her watch every few seconds. Tilting her head, Belle continued to watch her, watch her normally serene porcelain face wrinkled in impatience.

"You think if we just went up and asked her if she knew where he was that she would tell us?" she couldn't help but ask.

Before Ruby could swallow the tea swishing around in her mouth, a pigeon flapped less than an arm's length from Mother Superior, a tiny scroll attached to its rakish foot. Stroking its breast with the backs of her fingers, she tugged the scroll loose before it took off as suddenly as it came.

"What's all this about?" Ruby asked.

"I don't know."

With lightning speed, Mother Superior bustled back to the door.

Belle stepped outside herself, watched herself fling open the car door in slow motion and buzz to the convent with one eye in the sky hoping to track the pigeon and the other eye on...

"Mother Superior!"

Breathless in the doorway, she braced the door and smiled at Mother Superior.

"Belle! It is Belle now, isn't it?" she asked in a choppy, unsure way.

"Yes. Thank you for that potion."

"What's wrong? You look so flushed."

"Oh, I was just meaning to catch you before you had a meeting or a consultation of some kind..." Series of stories ran through her mind, plot lines, themes, motifs, dialogue, picking the snippets that be pieced together in some sort of story... "Do you know what's happened to the district attorney?" Lies did not come naturally to Belle, nor even Lacey. Mother Superior's saucer eyes widened even more.

"No, I had assumed he went into hiding. Have you heard from him?"

"It's just, with Emma gone..."

"Emma's gone? Where?" Mother Superior hurried to her and put her hand on her shoulder.

"I, I'm not sure where exactly," Belle said. "Her son was kidnapped. She and her family went to go find him." Family. At last Rumple had one.

"Gracious."

"There will be a town meeting tonight. We'll run some things by everyone, propose a few things. I think it's about time we kept dangerous people locked away, don't you think?"

"Yes, absolutely. The nuns will of course do whatever we can."

Belle took in the convent, breathed in the black and white tiling leading up to columns with rounded ridges. "Is Sister Astrid around?"

"Sister Astrid broke her vows and has hence left the convent," Mother Superior said with some bite.

"Ah, sorry. I didn't mean to pry. Well, I'll just get going. Er, bye." With an almost delirious laugh from adrenaline and embarrassment, she skittered down the street back to the car. Broken vows, was it? That was one of the most romantic things she'd heard in a long time, long lost lovers possibly reunited. Her brain rehearsed all kinds of ways she could hint to Leroy she knew all about it the next time she saw him. She couldn't even be angry one of her friends had started a secret relationship.

* * *

"Sheriff, huh?" Victor said across the table from her in the diner, two simple bowls of oatmeal with a few strawberries between them. Her day off, she could watch the increasing number of customers come in and order with detached amusement. This way she could soak in reliving last night, steamy shower water running, her back against the tiled wall, his fingers running through her hair, kisses peppered down her neck and collarbone. His scent on her towels, the shower curtain, even the soap had been intoxicating.

"Provided everything works out," she said, taking a sip of cranberry juice. "Belle could be a great mayor and I think she wants to. I just think she needs more confidence."

"Well," he said, wiping his mouth. "I've asked the other staff members about Spencer, casually, of course, like 'whatever happened to that guy' and nothing."

"Some sheriffing I'm doing," she sighed.

"Sheriffing?" he chuckled.

"Detecting? Investigating!"

"If manhunts were easy, they wouldn't be so much work. But I am running out of people to ask." Sympathetic smiles and empty bowls closed out breakfast. The new busboy gathered up their dishes. Ruby considered going back into the woods and tromping around until she picked up a scent. Exciting way to spend a day, she thought, shoving her hands in her pockets.

"When are you going to tell Belle about us?" he asked.

"Oh, soon. I just want to take care of this mess. Why, anxious for a really awkward double date?" she teased, giving him a peck on the lips.

"No, because I think I love you."

* * *

Ruby sat cross-legged on the chair behind the podium, hands in her lap. Her crammed box of a closet held countless items that could work for a date or a party, but few pieces that really screamed "professional." She settled on a red satin blouse and a gray tweed skirt that hit her knees. Not one for stockings without fishnet, her legs itched underneath a plain black set from the inn's lost and found. Standing close by, Belle mouthed words she'd written on index cards, looking so like a, well, like a librarian, Ruby thought, but one of the hot ones, the ones that could rip off their glasses and bun and instantly be ready for something smutty. At least one of them exuded professionalism, Belle in a white suit with a floral-patterned blouse underneath.

"What if I have to go to the bathroom while we're up here?" Leroy hissed at her from the chair next to her.

"Why don't you just go now? A good deputy is supposed to be prepared."

"If I could have everyone's attention..." Belle addressed the assembly, poised and giving no indication of any butterflies in the stomach.

"Too late now," Leroy muttered.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Storybrooke, I know many of you don't know me or haven't known me very long, but it doesn't take long to see that Storybrooke is in need of leadership, of people committed to doing everything they can for their town to thrive. William Faulkner once said, 'You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.' While it might be intimidating without the people we've usually relied on, you have others that are willing to step up and serve you."

Taking a breath, she scanned the crowd, needing to squint from the stage lights. Ruby had done the same moments ago looking for Granny and Victor and the other dwarves, but only the outlines of heads could be distinguished. It might be just as well Belle could neither see her father nor make out his flower-covered scent out in the audience.

"Our plan is simple. With me as your mayor and Ruby and Leroy as respective sheriff and deputy, we would hold those positions until the return of Sheriff Swan and her family or until the next election year, whichever comes first. Updating the schools and the library to be contemporary with the rest of the country, cracking down on crime, and, of course, seeking ways to make returning to the Enchanted Forest an opportunity are-"

"Excuse me!" A large thick arm shot out and waved from the back. Ruby and Leroy eased up from their chairs, hands still on the arms. Anton bounded toward them.

"Sorry! Sorry to interrupt, and I loved everything I was hearing, by the way." He blushed and kept gesturing for the microphone. "Sorry, uh, hi, everybody. I'm Anton. I'm the one who was farming the magic beans that were going to take us all home. As a lot of you know, the bean field was burned, but a few seedlings did survive. It might take a little while, but we should have a limited number in time and then these guys can organize things from there."

Ruby threw her arms around Leroy and giggled. A way home, the prospect of becoming sheriff closer than before, a boyfriend she loved and who loved her...too good to be true. Fate usually dictated that something really horrible happen to balance the universe out or something, but she hoped that was a long way's off.

"Thank you, Anton, for your input," Belle said, regaining the podium in her kind, persistent way. "Well, as you can all see, things are coming together. Now is the time to be organized and united and not let anyone or anything jeopardize our chances at happiness!"

Applause resounded throughout the town hall. Belle's head jerked back, a stunned laugh jutting out from her mouth. It wasn't official, but maybe after all they'd been through, a silver lining was in sight.


	11. Ten

When Regina imagined an island, she always pictured something small, those little masses out in the middle of nowhere with a single palm tree, where the comic strips always had a bearded somebody using coconuts for everything. A few islands in Neverland fit that description, but Neverland Proper dwarfed every last one of them. Countless hills and lagoons awaited them. The flatter areas bulged with forest. A peak behind the hills looked snow-capped. It could take weeks, and that was being optimistic, she thought.

Her hands on the rail with a knotted brow, she saw Emma mirrored her.

"Step back, ladies, lest you enjoy a good splash," Hook warned from the helm. The Jolly Roger creaked, a wave splashing onto the deck.

"So," Charming said to him. "This island has all the same surprises as the other ones did?"

"More or less, leaning towards more. Come nightfall, you'll hear the Lost Boys crying."

"The Lost Boys? I thought they were the ones who were serving Peter Pan?" Snow asked.

"Not one and the same, m'lady," Hook said, taking a sharp turn towards a lagoon. "The Lost Ones serve Peter. The Lost Boys are the ones brought to him." A look of fear, no, she knew what fear looked like, this was regret and a twinge of guilt, coming over his face. No stranger to regret herself, she hugged herself and listened further. "No parents, so no one to comfort them at night when they have time to think, time to have nightmares. Most pitiful souls you'd ever lay eyes on."

"Orphans," Emma murmured. "Do they know the island well?"

"Inside and out. Wait." Stopping the wheel, he leaned down towards them. "Rescuing one boy is hard enough, Swan. Let's not complicate matters further."

"If they know the island, they can help us," Emma argued. "Can they defend themselves?"

"I honestly wouldn't know."

"Emma, you're not talking about arming children to fight, are you?" Snow asked. Regina glanced over at Rumpelstiltskin, all too quiet now.

"Of course not. But they can do other things and free us to fight. How many more pairs of eyes is that?"

"A lot," Hook said.

Something stirred in Regina, something warm and clenching spreading from her heart to the ends of her body, something she hadn't felt since she'd first announced she wanted...

"Let me go to them," she said.

"What?" Charming gawked at her.

"They need someone to take care of them. I earn their trust and then they'll want to help."

"It should be me," Emma said, shaking her head. "No offense, Regina, but I've seen your idea of good parenting firsthand."

"And what would you know about parenting?" she snapped. "Or you? Or you? It's a sad day when the only people around who have experience with small children are your Evil Queen and the Dark One."

"You're talking about using children, both of you are!" Charming shouted.

"We won't use them. We'll rescue them." Emma put her hand on his arm. "They'll come back to Storybrooke with us."

"Excuse me?" Hook bounded down the steps, the ship docked. "This is a confined space, remember."

"We can't leave them here. If they really wanted Henry all along then they won't need them anymore and they'll kill him. They can mind the ship, they can be a crew, they can be a diversion. We can get this entire place to finally wake up and stop this craziness," she said. That noble streak, Regina noted.

"I'll let them find me," she announced, starting for the gangplank. "You can come find me and bring me provisions at night." A tug on her sleeve stopped her, albeit a gentle one, from Emma. "I know how to deal with tantrums. I know how to fix a scraped knee here and there. I can even change a diaper. You let me be Regina back in the mines. Let me be Regina now."

* * *

Emma ended her shift at the helm, handing it over to her mother. Between the ship's creaks, she looked out at the island and tried to pinpoint where the Lost Boys and Regina would meet. If the story about a clasp of cow hide restraining magic was true, she should spend the next inter-world trip finding whoever made them and getting a decade's supply for Storybrooke. In moments more full of denial than others, she pictured a Storybrooke with Regina and, yes, Rumpelstiltskin behind bars as a safer, more ideal place to live.

Where had Gold sneaked off to, anyway? Hook too, for that matter? Team Bad Guy left to their own devices sent a knot into her stomach. Rolling her eyes, she descended into the bowels of the ship to search.

Sad day when only Regina and Gold had experience around kids? Emma huffed to herself. Sad day when she needed to actually give a rat's ass about them. She'd fantasized about a Storybrooke devoid of Regina pretty much since Day One and yet none of those little thought bubbles included some _Lord of the Flies _society clubbing her to death. Rumpelstiltskin, well, at least he owned up to all his faults, she thought, a quick sweep of the cabins revealing nothing. And he helped her more than he didn't and, she hated to restate, he was Henry's grandfather, which made them family. He did seem to care for him, volunteering to come at all. She couldn't say she looked forward to seeing more of what someone called the Dark One could churn out, but at least it would be on her side, whatever it was.

Hook...she wished she didn't give a rat's ass about him, either. Cunning, persistent, resourceful—pretty damn off-putting that the positive traits didn't need much tweaking to be negative ones. Far be it from her to judge someone else for hanging on to what maybe should have been let go, but in spite of herself, she wanted to know what Milah had been like, to piece together a, a crime scene, if nothing else, to see what happened. She could have thrown him away, been satisfied with using him as a resource for finding her son except for two things, one of which, bizarrely, was not that he had chosen to come back and do what was right. That hadn't necessarily been expected, but it hadn't been unexpected either. No, the first was that he was telling the truth at the top of the beanstalk. That didn't mean he wouldn't have screwed them all over had a better offer come along, but his loyalty in exchange for a "ride" to her world was the truth. The next was that, for all his fatalistic talk concerning his obsession, he wanted to live. Maybe after he stabbed Rumpelstiltskin...because being tied up in a room would have to give you plenty of time to reflect...he'd realized he had nothing to live for. Three hundred some years of having nothing to live for invoked more sympathy out of her than resentment.

"Yeah, I spit on you. That's for punching me in the face at the cannery!" she heard Greg spout in a wet voice, like he had a mouthful of blood, or spit, from the sounds of it. Stopping right before the steps descended into the hull where he sat as their prisoner, she waited.

"And now I'm the one emptying your piss." She heard Hook's voice. "Seems I was already paying for punching you."

Considering Greg's recent actions, she would have paid to see him punched.

"Don't humor him." Rumpelstiltskin sounded farther back. "There's not much he can do from where he is."

"Just spit in people's faces, that's all." Such bite in their voices, she thought, trying to imagine harboring three hundred years' worth of hate. Maybe calling it cabin fever was an understatement.

"I wouldn't be so out of sorts, Captain. Couldn't be the worst thing to happen to you."

There was a pause and Emma could sense Hook turning.

"You'd be right about that," he said through his teeth. "Far from the worst. Isn't there somewhere else you can slither off to to busy yourself?"

A laugh of an exhale chilled Emma's blood.

"A crocodile reference! How clever of you," he scoffed. "I suppose then you think the worst isn't finding out after seven long years that your wife wasn't broken by pirates but just wanted a change of scenery. I hope you don't think you stole her from me. You see she was so capricious, so hollow a woman that anyone, anyone at all, could have had her. You were just the first one with a mattress."

"I think that says more about you than it does me," Hook said at the same time Emma realized she needed to fight back a gasp. Wife? Oh dear god, that meant...so many things... "I suppose I did your Belle a favor."

"When you shot her?" Voices rising. Must intervene soon. She clenched her fists.

"If Milah hadn't left you you might have just gotten to live your ordinary little lives, no power, no magic, no missing child seething with betrayal and disappointment. You would have died plain and unnoticed centuries before that deluded girl was ever even thought of."

There was no sound, no zap or pow or anything that would have been comfortable on an old superhero show, but Emma ran in anyway, catching Greg's smug "they can't even get along amongst themselves" face. She shouted a single "Hey!" before making it in between them. A white flash erupted from her body, sending everyone reeling backward. Including herself. She fell back into the bulkhead, a hot searing pain registering in her shoulder seconds later. Gasping as if she'd run a marathon, she stretched the collar of her shirt until a nasty dark cut met her eyes. She must have bumped right into a nail.

Rumpelstiltskin gave her an astonished look, a brief wave of concern and shame over his face after that. Unsure whether to look her in the eye or keep his distance, he merely held his hand out in her direction as he hobbled up the stairs, like he had hit her himself and had gone into shock.

"When you all kill each other, be sure to let me watch," Greg said.

"Shut up," Emma ordered, her hand on her shoulder.

"You're bleeding," Hook said, back on his feet.

"Yep. Bye."

"Swan...Emma, it needs stitches."

"I'll deal, thanks."

"Then let me do it by way of an apology," he said, his eyes not leaving the dark spot on her shirt. "I've needle and thread up in the cabin, along with some rum." He waggled his eyebrows at her with a grin. "Dulls pain in a rather pleasing manner. Come now, you know you'll be the one meeting Regina tonight. You want to be at your best? I doubt Red Bull can take care of that."

"Red Bull? What the hell are you talking about?" She was already following him up to the cabin, waving her good arm at her father to not be worried. Just a scratch. Only a flesh wound. You should have seen the other guy.

"Your mum's Red Bull. She offered it to me earlier, an elixir of sorts, I gathered." He opened his cabin door and gestured for her to take a seat near the desk while he fetched the sewing kit.

"Spacious," she breathed, cocking her head at the books. Three full shelves, not one of them familiar, but, judging from the titles, most of them involved time traveling, inhabited stars and planets...guess every world has its version of science fiction, she thought. She rolled up her sleeve, each roll tighter and tighter until she wondered if she would cut off her circulation. Finally, she exposed her shoulder. Hook pulled a chair next to her and threaded the needle, the point of his hook not much help.

"Sure you don't want a little bit of rum?" he asked.

"Just do it."

It was a fiercer pinch than Emma had expected. She tucked her lips into her mouth and gummed them. Tears prickled her eyes.

"You could provide a distraction, you know," she winced.

"The door still being open puts a limit on my distractions."

Oh, the Innuendo Show again. Just what anger, physical exertion, and injury had been missing.

"Tell me a story then." It worked on little kids, older ones, sometimes. No reason it wouldn't work for her. She could visualize better than most people assumed. She'd seen the world she'd thought Henry created so vividly when he spoke of it, even before she took a good look at the book's illustrations.

"You tell me one. Make your mind work on something else."

"Or you could humor the injured woman since it was partly your fault in the first place."

With a smile, a hesitant, fine-I'll-stoop-to-your-level smile, he looked away from her back at his work.

"Well, once upon a time." His mouth twisted a certain way. "There was a young boy who lived with his mother on the outskirts of a port town. His father was a merchant sailor, which meant he didn't see him often, but that didn't stop him from wanting to be just like him, like most sons." The words ran together, without much inflection, but they held her attention. "Life went smoothly until he was four when his mother died and his father was now charged with full-time parenting. He knew nothing but sailing, so he decided that was the place for the boy, and brought him along.

"The boy took to the sea. He loved sitting and drawing the silhouettes of the islands, he loved taking hold of the wheel, and he especially loved climbing the rigging into the crow's nest. He loved anything he could climb. Rigging, the rocky coasts when the ship would make stops."

Beanstalks, she thought.

"It took a while, but he eventually caught on that the things he and the men around him were doing weren't what the other merchant sailors were doing. Somewhere in the middle of robbing a passing ship, the thought must have hit him. He also realized his father, while an enthusiastic pirate, was not exactly a smart one, and it was only a matter of time before they'd all be caught.

"He made a good case for retiring, as good as a ten-year-old can, and his father agreed that they would abandon the captain and the crew and stowaway on an outbound ship. It didn't matter where it was going. They had enough loot to start a new life anywhere, perhaps even be actual merchant sailors. The next morning, the captain shook the boy awake, but he didn't have him arrested. He sat down next to him and showed him parchment with his father's face on it. It gave a description and mentioned the fact he traveled with a small boy. He'd left him, abandoned him to strangers and the sea to save his own skin. The captain pitied the boy and made him a cabin boy. He brought him up to speed on all the fundamentals he'd missed when he was learning how to sail and pillage, how to read, how to figure. The boy's father was caught and hanged a few weeks later, but it was then the boy decided that the best life that could be allotted to him depended upon him becoming the captain of his own ship." He swallowed, looking at her out of the corner of his eye and continued his work. With one last pinch, she watched him gather the thread. "That's it."

She flexed her shoulder, rotating it a few times, the red thread a beacon against her pale skin.

"That was the only color." He made a dismissive gesture at it, reading her like an open book once again.

"Thanks." She watched him pull the chair back and ease into it, preparing for conversation, or at least company. "So, what have you got planned when we get back?"

"Swan, I sit here and hope for some casual, albeit it stimulating, conversation and come up empty-handed. A shame, you being interesting and all."

"Interesting," she repeated. She bit the inside of her cheeks, not wanting to laugh at him after all she'd just listened to, but jeez, when he wasn't dripping in double entendre, he wasn't that formidable a flirt. All right, she'd bite. "How?"

"Well, having Rumpelstiltskin as a member of your family among other reasons," he said. "Just what is that even like?"

"It's..." Good lord, she hadn't even had time to think about it hard, not since she'd found out. "It's _Maury_-worthy, I'll say that." That would fly right over his head. "It's terrifying and it's a little hopeful. Don't. Don't. I don't want to argue about it. I had asked you what you had planned once we get back."

The white in his knuckles faded after she changed the subject.

"I ask because, because I want to help you." She leaned forward and risked looking into those mesmerizing forget-me-not blue eyes she'd made the mistake of looking into a few times in the Enchanted Forest. "I'm going to owe you ev—so much," she said. "If there's something you'll want to do in Storybrooke, I'll be the sheriff again, well, maybe..." Brushing off the train of thought that was who would be doing that job right now, she shook her head and looked back at him, seeing an unreadable expression she wasn't sure she liked. "But I might have some pull and you would have a second chance to live your life. Really live." A flash of blue dragged her eyes to the door where she saw her father pass by not even trying to look inconspicuous. Standing up, she rotated her shoulder one more time. She heard a tiny clunk before she had even straightened her back. Panning the floor, she picked up a gray metallic thimble that must have fallen out of the sewing kit.

"Sorry about that. Here," she said, dropping it into his hand.

"Thank you," he said, so hushed.

* * *

They wore animal skins. They smelled. Even just watching them weave through the trees, hiding from her but wanting to be seen, she could smell the pungent mix of oil and body odor boys never seemed to rid themselves of until they were men, and not even then sometimes. She ignored them and trekked farther, hoping that would prompt one of them to pop out and introduce themselves. It wasn't like the Lost Boys in the stage show she'd seen on TV once or twice. Those Lost Boys had seemed to swarm to new people like bugs toward a zapper. Ha, foolish comparisons of real life to fiction—so this is how Emma must feel all the time.

"Halt!" Three feet in front of her, a blonde, wavy-haired boy of about twelve, with eyes the same shade as a bowl of melted chocolate, stood with his feet shoulder-length apart and his hands on his hips. On either side, boys, twelve altogether, she counted, blocked her path, none older than Henry, two or three of them only about eight or nine. "Who are you?"

"I'm here to find someone," she said. Years with Henry taught her not to bend down with kids this age, nor to adjust tone of voice. They needed to be talked to like adults. "I'm his mother."

"Are you my mother?" one of the smaller boys asked, his mop of red curls and enormous black-licorice eyes drying her lips.

"Grown-ups don't belong on our part of the island," the blonde boy said again. "She's a Lost One."

"No, no, I'm not. The Lost Ones took my son," she said, reviewing in her mind what magic she'd used since she had arrived. She couldn't let children overpower her, not when they were this close to Henry. "And I have a feeling they took all of you."

"The Shadow took me," one of them said.

"Me too."

"They send the Shadow to other worlds. It always comes back with a kid."

"Then I don't like this Shadow any more than you do," she said. The horror of imagining a shadowy, translucent magical thing flying off with Henry made her almost grateful that two mortal humans had done it instead. Almost. "If you tell me everything you know, about them, about this place, you can come back with me. We'll give all of you mothers." And for the first time since Emma had suggested it, Regina wanted them to come back with them, wanted it bad enough to drag each one of them by the hair onto the ship itself. Before, it had been the idea of being around young children again, to maybe relive the days before Henry discovered things in Storybrooke weren't normal. These boys were older than she'd assumed, but they needed someone.

They huddled, whispers and grunts all she could make out.

"So you've come to be our mother," the blonde boy spoke again with the confidence and presence of a forty-year-old.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Miles."

"Miles, I'm here to help you. I want my son, but I want to help all of you." Most of them were tanned, the little redheaded boy the freckled exception, and all of them looked able to lift more and run faster than any child she'd seen before.

"Like the Wendy lady!" a long-haired, gaunt boy cried.

"Quiet, Aaron!" Miles hissed. "We have to be careful this time. You remember what happened to the Wendy lady."

Every last one of their eyes went downcast, obviously pained but stoic, the way solemn grown men might stand at a funeral. Regina shuddered.


	12. Eleven

_On horseback, the wind whistled the entire way down the dirt road, one she knew her love had ridden at a frenzied pace to rescue her. And now they were riding it together, Snow thought, taking a moment in spite of the galloping to glance over at Charming on his horse, the ride to the castle a mad dash for something they had already earned. Their friends followed, whooping and singing. Guards followed them, their relieved sighs of never listening to the orders of the Evil Queen or King George again. They were like a parade, and it was about time this place had something celebratory._

_ She reached the castle first. The last time she'd been at its front steps, she'd been nothing but a cloaked girl, waiting for a Huntsman to lead her to her death. _

_ "I suppose castles don't come in a bungalow size, do they?" Charming asked as he dismounted, beaming at the doorway, the narrow arched windows, the freshly painted turrets. _

_ "We'll make sure it's never empty," she said. "We'll always have guests. We'll give rooms to whoever we want." The memory of his mother still stung, her body stretched out on the wagon, her gown and bloodied gauze like shrouds. Ruth would have been given the largest room, her own mother's chambers, scarlet and gold with light always pouring in. _

_ Red and the dwarves caught up, Jiminy fluttering right behind them. All were gazing back at the convoy of horses and coaches, leaving, for once, she and Charming out of focus. Slipping her arm through his, she laid her head on him. _

_ "Are you ready for this, to be rulers?" she asked. Part of her wondered if they would both be happier tending a small farm where he could shepherd again, finding those who had been counted as lost._

_ "So long as you do the talking." A firm kiss on the top of her head elaborated. _

_ "The kingdom will need something to be happy about after all this fighting."_

_ "Definitely."_

_ "And we need something to look forward to." There. He looked at her, a guarded grin spreading across his face. See, we have no secrets, David, she thought. Your own mother told me how much you want children... "Maybe if we filled this space up with children it wouldn't seem so big?"_

_ "You're ready?" he asked, squeezing her tighter. "You're sure you want to start now?"_

_ She kissed him. Yes. Snow hadn't given much thought to mothering growing up. Her thoughts prior to her mother's death had been flowers, kittens, epic histories, and poetry...her thoughts after her father's death survival, revenge, competence, all the while hoping she could be a good person, that what was in her heart would be transparent to all. But that pendant, swinging back and forth above her hand, his utter joy at just the prospect of having a child, having a child with her...she had fought even harder for just the chance. A daughter first, according to the pendant, one who would tromp around wild with her hair tangled, her facial expressions fascinating to observe, and then others. Other daughters and sons so she could be the big sister, so she'd never be alone._

* * *

If there was one task Snow actually enjoyed on this whole endeavor, one that took her mind off of Henry for just a little while, it was collecting fresh water from the Neverland islands' many springs. They steered clear of the lagoons, which bothered her not in the least, and stuck to thin creeks and brooks.

Charming accompanied her this time, the two of them following Hook, whom she was beginning to pity as he always had to be among the party that ventured out. For a ship to be the only thing close to home in so long, she wondered if it ever made him uneasy to leave it. Soft cold rain pitter-pattered down on them, no brimmed hats to keep it off their faces.

"It's right here," he called to them, a few paces ahead. "Same spot it was in last time."

"That's usually the nature of springs," Charming retorted, twisting the lid off to the bottle. He held it up to where the rocks created a tiny fountain, the air smelling crisp and grassy thanks to the rain.

"Why haven't we seen many of the native people?" she asked. Perhaps a stupid thing to ask in the middle of a rain, but it had already left her mouth. First bottle full.

"We're strangers to them. Most of the tribes prefer to keep to themselves."

"No chance in trying to recruit them to our cause then," Charming said, pausing between bottles to lean his head down and take a short drink.

"They have their own affairs, wouldn't you think?" Hook laughed. "Drop everything going on, risking life and limb to go after a boy they don't know at some stranger's behest? An idealistic notion, but people aren't like that, on Neverland or elsewhere."

"That's exactly what you did," she said, wishing the rain would stop. Raindrops spitting at her cheeks wouldn't give her the most authoritative presence. Charming folded his arms, smirking at the captain. Don't start that, she thought.

"Not quite, m'lady," he said, after a beat, after something flickered in his eyes that seemed close to stark realization, she'd noticed. "You see, I had nothing else going on."

"Let's get back to the ship and out of this weather, before the others start worrying," Charming suggested, picking up the bucket of bottles and starting back towards the brush, which would lead out to the beach, which would lead to the longboat—being a pirate was exhausting, she decided.

Hook held back, Snow choosing to ignore him. The man acted so strangely around her, alternating between wanting to tease and wanting to be as far from her as possible. One day she would confront him on it, make sure he knew that no matter his tendency to underestimate her, she'd ruled a kingdom, taken it back by force from the very people who had threatened her, had made it their life's work to ruin her. Their family had made mistakes in the past, had been separated and hurt one another, but they had plenty to keep their heads up in pride.

"Don't paint me as a hero," he warned, the brisk tone unsettling.

"Oh, don't worry about that. I remember full well you pulled a sword on my daughter."

"Technically, she pulled one on me. I was simply defending my keep."

"You've called yourself a gentleman."

"Gentleman, yes. A gentleman need not be sweet."

"And then you turned up in New York and put her in danger again," she added, knowing she was likely exaggerating the level of danger anyone but Rumpelstiltskin had been in at that time.

"It's not my fault I happen to always find her," he said. For a moment, Snow stopped in her tracks. No, no, that phrase doesn't mean the same thing as it does to me. Stop projecting, Mary Margaret, she scolded the weakest parts of her. It's not the same, anyway. Just the same, she adjusted her bucket of bottles, a glimpse at his actual heart could be worth a thousand self-assurances. A thought hit her.

"Have you ever had your heart pulled from you?"

Hook spun around, for the first time looking truly murderous. So, a yes. Better say something...besides calling out for Charming.

"So have I. It's not pleasant. Hurts. I, I always tried to do the right thing, even without the possibility of an award. I've lost people, lost some happiness, doing the right thing, but my own heart...my own heart has a dark spot on it after making some rash, tempting choices."

"Get to the point, m'lady, because we're fast approaching the boat and space will not force me to listen much longer."

"I just wonder if I were to look at yours, if maybe it would be the inverse of mine, dark, cruel, bitter...but maybe a spot of light in there somewhere. You may not have had anything going on, Captain, but you had hope, and that was why you decided to help find Henry."

They rowed back to the ship in silence.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, a short chapter. That's why you get two!  
**


	13. Twelve

_Icy rain sliced through his very eyelashes. His feet sank into the thick mud, so much so each new step was harder than the last. A shivering, filthy mess, remembering times when he'd been wrapped in furs over lush robes added to the torture. King George, reduced without compunction to George, hobbled downhill into the trees. _

_ The mud came to his knees now, but it beat walking along the road where any moment that ungrateful bastard and his simpering wife and their entourage could recapture him. He didn't care about the drab garment they'd shoved him in once he became a prisoner, thread-bare and patched before it had ever touched him. It was the shoes he hoped would hold out. A flash of lightning split the sky, giving him just enough time to spot a fallen log not too far. At the start of the rumbling thunder he crawled into it. _

_ "Cozy, but I still prefer a draft to this." George barely had enough time to recognize the high-pitched giggle before he heard a snap of fingers. All of a sudden, he found himself squatting in the foyer of the Dark Castle itself, gray but dry, the only color in the entire room a vase of wilting roses._

_ "That's better," Rumpelstiltskin said, no raindrops on his leathery apparel._

_ "Please, make a deal with me," George coughed and noticed his fingernails were tinged with blue. _

_ "I already did, dearie. I even compensated you for one twin with another, and it looks like Prince James-Second-Try is doing quite well for himself."_

_ "Don't call him that," George snapped. He followed the imp through a dining room to a parlor, one with little décor or knickknacks, but with a lit fireplace. He couldn't wait for permission. He strode right over to it and held his hands out in front of the fire. "What do you want with me?"_

_ "Why, what kind of subject is that for me to start when I have company?" His hand flew to his heart in mock indignation. "You are the guest. Let's hear what you want first."_

_ "I don't care what I have to do. Give me my kingdom back. Dispose David and Snow White and place me back on the throne as if nothing had ever happened."_

_ "You're sure it isn't just some comfort food you want?" Two steaming bowls of soup appeared on the little table between the two massive easy chairs. _

_ "Don't toy with me, Rumpelstiltskin. You found me and brought me here. That can only mean you want to make a deal." Enough with a king's dignity, he thought, picking up the bowl and letting it heat his palms. A prisoner's desperation would be the key to warmth and some food in his system._

_ "I do indeed. You know me so well!" With flourish in his arms, he produced a yellowed map with row upon row of trees between the white creases. The green of the forested clusters had begun to fade, but George could see a scattering of black dots with thin script showing the names of villages._

_ "I won't restore your kingdom to you, or help you find some ironic end to those who disposed of you. However, you can do something for me and get something better than a hiding place."_

_ "And what would that be?"_

_ "A cloaking spell, one that would bend to your will. If you didn't want someone to see you, a tall, gallant, princely someone..." Rumpelstiltskin hissed, adding bite to each syllable. "...you could render yourself invisible until you wanted those around you to see you again. Easy way to evade guards, as long as you see them first."_

_ "And what is the price?"_

_ "Now we're talking! You must go to this grove here on the map." He smacked his hand into the map as hard as he could. "It's a fairy grove. You will act the contrite, penitent man who would be on the brink of self-destruction but for a flicker of light in the form of redemption. Too eloquent for you? Well then, you will go to this grove, befriend the fairies that live there and offer them your services. Weeder of the forest or something like that. You will listen to them, find out everything you can, and report back to me. In exchange, I do not see to it Prince Charming finds you and has you promptly executed for escaping prison. Do we have a deal?"_

_ "That's not a deal, that's blackmail," George said, his chin high._

_ "Then do we have a blackmail?" Rumpelstiltskin asked, nonplussed, extending his hand._

_ What choice do I have, George thought, once again sealing his fate with a handshake._

_ "The deal is struck."_

* * *

"Hello?" Belle used to shout into the receiver, holding it a good six inches from her ear. The cell phone she had now certainly had its advantages, but she still felt more comfortable with the curly-corded red phone in her apartment.

"Belle, it's Ruby. You need to come meet me at the hospital right away."

"Oh no, are you all right?" She bolted up from the recliner as if it were a hot plate.

"I'm fine. I got a call from V—Dr. Whale." Her voice dropped an octave. "You won't believe who's there."

* * *

"Where is he? Where is the son of a bitch?" Ruby raced into the hospital, gold replacing her hazel irises, the whites of her eyes disappearing, and it was not even a full moon.

"Ruby, stop!" she called, watching Dr. Whale throw his arms around her, holding her back from the room.

"Monsters," it sounded like he'd whispered in her ear, some reference to something Belle didn't know. Loosening in his grasp, she inhaled and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Ruby was back. Belle sighed.

"He's pretty banged up, a little dehydrated, stitches in a few places, sprained ankle," Dr. Whale said outside D. A. Spencer's room. "If I had to venture a guess, I'd say he was running and then tripped and fell downhill...more a girl-in-a-horror-movie thing, but known to happen to older men, too." He cleared his throat when Belle didn't laugh. "We're going to keep him overnight for observation and then I didn't know if you two were..." Glancing at Ruby, he cleared his throat again.

"You aren't supposed to tell just anyone what's wrong with a patient," Belle said.

"I...I was under the impression..." Looking at Ruby one more time, he lowered his voice. "You're not acting sheriff yet?"

"No, not yet, but, you know, soon." She shrugged.

Dr. Whale's head fell back against the glass wall that stood between them and the patient while he stared up at the ceiling. "Okay, make a citizen's arrest."

"What's that?"

"Look, we have no mayor, no sheriff, not even an official deputy running around. Believe me, David Nolan decked me pretty good. My jaw would start acting up if he were around." Whale stroked his jaw and smiled. "You just tell him you're making a citizen's arrest, tell him why, and find a way to detain him until somebody official comes along, which, if you two play your cards right, will be yourselves. You're running unopposed."

"Thanks," she said after a pause. "I, I'll want to talk to him when he wakes up. Ruby, maybe you could buy Dr. Whale some coffee or something?"

"Sure," Ruby said, slipping her jacket over her shoulder. "Let's go."

* * *

She sat at the edge of his bedside, wringing her hands. Detaining him while still in the hospital was possible, if not ideal, and she wouldn't stuff her worst enemy in her old cell in the basement. There was an element of _presence_ in her demeanor that had never formed, trivial bits from stories—character names, settings about details, recurring themes—filling in that particular space of her brain. She'd used confrontation as a last resort because it seemed she was incapable of intimidating anyone. Appealing to another's better judgment worked better for her, but she just knew that wouldn't work now. His eyelashes fluttered. Her chest heaved.

"Hello, Mr. Spencer." A series of blinks from glacier-blue eyes answered her, a still moment of contemplation.

"I've seen you before."

"Yes, I was at Granny's the night you confronted David Nolan. That was the night you cut up Billy."

"The mouse," he whispered, not from regret but from exhaustion.

"He was a man, and he was someone's friend." Standing up, she hoped she appeared to be towering over him. "I need you to tell me what happened to you."

"I don't have to tell you a thing," he said, straightening his body until he lied rigid. With the button, he brought himself to a reclining position, the bed his throne.

"You took a man's life. You're nothing but a danger to Storybrooke."

"I don't know who you were in the real world, the one we're from, but I happened to be a king. That may have happened by blood, but it was a thirty-year reign. You don't rule a kingdom for thirty years if you're the kind of person who answers to a simpering wholesome little girl playing detective," he said without flinching. For not even two seconds, she considered playing her princess card, turning up a futile smile at how little that would accomplish. Well, no appealing to one's better judgment, she thought. She would have to tell a little white lie.

"Are you a reader, Mr. Spencer?" She knew he wouldn't answer, so she leaned down closer, as she'd seen them do on _Law and Order. _"It's a hobby of mine. I just finished a wonderful play, _Hamlet. _Do you know it? It's about a prince and the torture he undergoes deciding how to act after realizing his uncle murdered his father. It's a play about poisons, really. How he did it was Claudius, the uncle, dropped some poison into the king's ear. I'm not sure how that works, but there's a poisoned chalice at the end, which Hamlet forces his uncle to drink from and kills him. What's sad is that his own mother also drank from it, by mistake. It would be so easy for someone to slip some poison into the hospital food or a drink, or maybe even your medicine. Do you see the point I'm trying to make?"

"It's not a subtle one," he retorted.

"No, maybe not, but..." She pinched the sheets, plucking and rolling her hand along. "You do have to eat and drink, doesn't matter where. I know the nuns took you in, for example. I have nothing better to do, though, and there are poisons that have no taste."

"Threatening me isn't wise," he said.

"I don't see why it isn't. You've been in hiding because everyone knows you're a murderer. Dr. Whale wouldn't need much temptation to put down whatever cause of death he wanted. And I would get away with it." She hoisted herself back up and rested her weight on her arm. "See, I'm honest, Mr. Spencer. People believe me when I say things. Even now if you told anyone I threatened you, they wouldn't believe you. They wouldn't believe you because you're a murderer and I've never threatened anyone."

Spencer eyed her, a simmering hatred behind his cold eyes. With just the faintest twitching of a vein in his neck, his mouth dropped open a centimeter.

"The nuns threw me out."

"The nuns threw you out?" It sounded like the zany plot of a television show, large penguin-dressed old women with rulers forcing a man to run a gauntlet.

"I made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, not long after that ungrateful imposter and his wife dethroned me. I was to report back to him on what the fairies were doing, how much magic they had. I had started with his suggestion, that I be repentant and do chores for them to gain their trust. They seemed suspicious so I said that he had hired me to spy on them but that I didn't want to. I wanted to protect them from him. That, they believed."

"What happened?"

"I reported back to Rumpelstiltskin. I chose the power I'd seen firsthand over the fluffy, flighty power they had. Once he had everything he wanted, he considered our deal complete and he burned their hollow to the ground."

Belle bit her lip, hearing about such atrocities not new, but still always left her nauseated.

"It was before his own imprisonment, of course," Spencer continued. "The Blue Fairy had been working on proving he was behind that all this time. Once she learned my part, the ire began." He wrinkled his face in pain, reliving his beating. He did not speak again until he composed himself. "She said she wished for nothing more than for the portal that took his son to have taken him, too, that our world wouldn't be able to survive both his and the fairies' power. It was the longest I'd heard her speak, raving about how she'd finally found a way to see the end of him."

"What did she mean?" she breathed. No. The words of the prophesy, that a boy would be his undoing with her own selfish, careless Lacey advising him to just get rid of those who stood in his way, echoed in her mind.

"I don't know more than that. Now, I would like to get some rest without fear of eating whatever is on the tray when I wake up. I told you what I know. No need to fear poisoning?"

"Not by me," she said, seeing Whale and Ruby return, laughing and talking like old friends. Good thing she'd calmed down. Leaving the room without looking back at him, she reached for both Ruby's hands. "You're okay?"

"Yeah, just a, a reflex," she said. "What did you find out?"

"I think our friends are in danger." Her hand clasped the back of her neck as she paced. Rumple, his entire family, the people who had welcomed her into their circle and helped her adapt to this new world and its oddities. She clamped her eyes shut, willing a plan, anything. A lively imagination and a knack for remembering stories never left Belle with empty darkness when she closed her eyes until now.

"There has to be a way to communicate with them," Ruby said. Belle refused to shake her head.

"I think I might know a way," Whale said. "Follow me."

* * *

**A/N: Do NOT make a citizen's arrest this way. All that really is is assessing a situation and calling the police. You can't even handcuff or tie up anyone you would be doing this to. Just some artistic license and I would hope you don't learn laws from OUAT. I also think it would be presumptuous of Belle to live in Rumple's house while he's gone for some reason. They weren't living together as of the finale and I just felt it would be more in-character for her to hang onto whatever living arrangements she already had until he came back. Neither of them exactly mind taking it slow. **

**Also, a few people have asked about what happened to Wendy. Don't think I've forgotten. That tale won't be in the next chapter, but it will be after some action has happened so to keep the story's pacing how I want it. I appreciate every review.**


	14. Thirteen

Night fell. Emma sighed, next to Rumpelstiltskin huddled by the steps. This land would never be one she could get used to, the night sky a soft dark violet.

"You're sure you can get this getaway spell together in time?" she asked.

"Miss Swan, such doubts. Have I ever been unsure about my magic?"

No need to cluck about it, she thought, although she reminded herself that a "Dark One's" powers on Henry's side would be nothing less than a force to be reckoned with.

"...moreover," Rumpelstiltskin continued, bringing her back into the present. "Can the lot of you find Regina...alive...and then get to Henry? Some of us have rather hit an incompetence streak lately." His eyes veered to Hook who glared back in kind.

"Hey, truce, remember?" she snapped. "Everyone's pulling their weight, Gold."

"Precisely. So there was no need to question me, was there?"

So cool and suave all the time, except when he chose not to be...sadly, it seemed a crocodile was all too appropriate—a creature who could calmly wait, could be still and seemingly passive until just the right moment before it unleashed hell. She loathed it, respected it, and loathed she respected it.

"Don't piss off a desperate mom, Gold," she warned, starting back to where her parents were loading a longboat when she stopped. Neverland, Greg and Tamara, magic in general—she needed to collect herself. She needed to be at her most alert and yet her most serene. Wax on, wax off, or something. So she tilted her chin up to the sky and searched for Orion. There. Gemini? There. Taurus? Now this was creepy. She'd been too tired in the Enchanted Forest to stargaze. Had it been the same sky, too?

Stop walking towards him, stop walking towards him...damn. Hook turned, sensing someone nearby and so now was her cue to ask stupid irrelevant questions minutes before they all entered into some battle with Viking-level bloodshed a sure thing.

"Is that constellation called Orion here?" she asked, pointing up.

A moment's blink, he slowly looked up as if suspecting a trick and then eyed her.

"You know your stars. I told you you'd be one hell of a pirate." A grin spread along his face...never good. "He hunts the little rabbit right there, Lepus."

"Yeah, great, but if these are all other worlds, why is the sky the same? Why are they called the same thing here?"

"I'm not a philosopher, Swan. I've happened to notice your world was quite aware of some of the more notable names from my world, myself included. If the worlds connect, then why does it surprise you there are similarities?" He brought his head down just a little, eyes softening, and for a moment she feared he would ask her if she was afraid. Hell, why was there such a fine line between finding a way to compose yourself and distracting yourself from fear? "I'm sure the women from both worlds look fairly similar, but if we want to be sure..."

She laughed in spite of herself.

"You're coming. Better arm yourself and get ready. It's almost time to go." She turned, but suddenly felt reluctant. It wouldn't kill you to play back, she thought. Hear a guy's dark-and-troubled-past story and you don't throw anything out there? Pretty sure now was not the time to share that she also once had a confrontation with a lover's...ha ha...partner's spouse, she opted for something lighter. "Pretty sure being late to a fight goes against some kind of pirate code."

* * *

Charming heaved, hauling Greg by the armpits, Hook assisting by hauling the ankles, into a longboat. Gagged, they could all finally catch a break from the offensive names and pseudo-scientific speeches that would be right at home in an outdated textbook. The nine millimeter he kept in his holster still retained fifteen shots, but he knew that could change tonight.

Snow cut in front of Emma and sat in the longboat, a challenging smile on her face.

"Hey! Don't think that's going to stop me from going," Emma warned.

"No. We're going together." Snow patted the space next to her. It struck Charming as endearing...and odd...that the proof the Snow who had despaired over her heart weeks ago was gone, was that the bandit he'd fallen like a ton of bricks for in the forest was waiting for her family to join her into the fray.

"David was already going..." Emma trailed off, watching him climb into the longboat. "Oh, what the hell." She climbed in after them.

He sat across from them, gripping the handle of an oar.

"Coming, Hook?" Emma called up.

"Right away." The longboat wobbled when Hook jumped in, grinning up at Rumpelstiltskin, who was lowering them. "Best not be left alone with the elderly fellow, right, mate?"

"Now remember," Rumpelstiltskin called down to them, ignoring Hook's comment. "There is already a shield enchantment on the ship, so once you're back, you'll be safe. I'll be finishing the flight spell while you're gone, but I will be pinpointing your location. The globe should let me see exactly where you all are and I can assist long distance."

"Long distance sounds pretty haphazard," Emma called back.

"Since when do you know anything with my name on it to be haphazard, Miss Swan?" The longboat hit the water, murky, but still warm in the dark. "Good luck."

* * *

The sand faded into an overgrown brush, luscious and humid, moisture clinging to every starchy star flower and every endless tree trunk. The smell of animal waste permeated the air more than the smaller islands. That made sense, Charming thought, with it being a bigger island. Moonlight prevented them from tripping over low-hanging branches and tangled shrubs. Leaving Greg tied to the boat, they had decided to scout for Regina before anything else. A tip of white close by caught his eye. Taking a knee, he sifted through the soil until the tip tapered down into a full skull, a raccoon or badger-sized creature, some teeth overlapping the jaws. But it wasn't a wildlife comparison that occupied his mind. Little drawings and letters covered the base of the skull, like a kid's cast covered in signatures.

"Look," he said, holding out his discovery. "Handiwork of a kid, a Lost Boy, I bet. We're getting close."

The only, only, reason he dared not hope the Lost Boys hadn't killed Regina was that if they had killed her, then they would be hostile to the rest of them, and shooting children was just something he would never be able to do. He held the skull, promising himself he would make a stronger argument for Regina's incarceration once that was possible. It had gone beyond her affecting only their family; she had almost let the entire town be destroyed, the thought of Henry, with any children that might have been born once the clock started going again, alone, alone in the middle of nowhere with no one who would believe his story frightened him, not just infuriated him, but frightened him. And no matter the circumstances, he would not lose anyone to that woman again.

Fingers caressed his arm; Snow had sneaked up on him, her temple brushing against his arm. He planted a kiss on the top of her head.

"What's wrong? Besides everything?" she asked.

Before he could answer, they fell back, he, Snow, Emma, and Hook swept up in a mass of scratchy twine and rope. On his back, Snow across his belly, Hook on his arm, he tried to roll onto his side.

"Is everyone okay?" Snow shouted.

"Peachy, m'lady," Hook said, his face pressed into one of the net's windows. He rolled to the edge of the net and began slicing away at the rope with his hook.

"Snow, can you reach my knife?"

"Yes. Right here." Feeling his pocket knife pulled from his pocket, he braced himself for the eventual long drop. Once again, nets were involved when Snow White took something from him. He let out a small chuckle.

"That's looking on the bright side," Emma grunted, stuck behind him.

"Go easy on him, Emma. This is kind of how we m—!" There it was, the thud. Jeans did little to break falls, but he'd noticed that a while ago. The only way that could have hurt worse is if he'd fallen on his keys.

"Everyone okay?" he asked, patting himself down. Helping Snow to her feet, they found themselves surrounded by a group of children, their eyes glistening in the moonlight as much as a wild animal's.

"My _Peter Pan_'s rusty. We don't get eaten, do we?" Emma mouthed to anyone willing to answer.

"Wait!" Regina emerged from the brush, still in the burgundy blazer and black slacks from Storybrooke, but with fox and beaver pelts hanging from her waist like a belt. A necklace of sorts, teeth or bones Charming couldn't tell, added to the visual weirdness. "Boys, hold on. These are our friends. They're here to help us. Where's Owen?"

"Back in the longboat. What did you find out?" he asked.

"Peter Pan is supposed to return tonight. They have Henry in a cage to the west of here with the Lost Ones guarding him, Tamara included. The boys say there are ten of them." She stepped closer to them, her voice lowering. "They've taken their shadows. Once Peter Pan removes a shadow he can command it. They can follow orders but apparently aren't too bright since they've been mistaking all these boys for Henry. They bring them here and once the Lost Ones say it was a mistake, their shadows get taken and they get left here to fend for themselves." The smallest, a chestnut-haired boy with green eyes that could have looked like Henry if Charming squinted and wasn't aware of how old he was supposed to be, clung to her leg. Picking up a stick, he drew into the soil.

"Using this box as the place where they're keeping Henry, can any of you make me a map?" A blonde, worldly boy raised his hand.

"Miles," Regina said, gesturing for him to come forward. Everyone huddled together and watched him draw into the dirt.

"Slightly's the one you got to watch out for the most, him and Tamara," he said, using an X for each Lost One. "Tootles is a pushover, but he's always surrounded by the others."

"Slightly?" Emma and Regina repeated at the same time, their eyebrows straightened, faces as white as Neverland's beaches. They looked at each other, pure horror taking over.

* * *

Whale led Belle and Ruby down into the bowels of the hospital, the paint on the walls gradually darkening from white to to green to brown. Stopping in their march just long enough for him to use a keypad, they entered a lobby with a lone snake light.

"No, no." Terror seized Belle, memories of running down the long bare corridor to this lobby overwhelming her mind. Her hair and eyes feral, her feet kicking off the slippers to keep from sliding to the floor—sedatives, a straitjacket on occasion... What little light there was in the lobby began fading from view, so dizzying she couldn't tell if her eyes were opened or closed. Her knees buckled.

"Belle, Belle, you are not going back into that cell." Whale's fingers clenching her arms brought her vision back, one pixel at a time. "You will never, ever go back in that cell. There's someone down here who may have a way to get us to talk to them. We will let him out. Belle, look at me."

She had no identity, no memory. She spent the day staring out the window, no view, just the sun and a tree, hoping today was the day someone who loved her would come let her out, someone would talk to her, someone would just touch her...

"Belle, it's okay." It was Ruby's turn to hold her hand. Ruby, a friend. Ruby had given her a place to stay when she had nowhere to go. Ruby showed her how to pour syrup on pancakes. Ruby explained how a public library in this world worked.

"I'm, I'm fine. Really. Lead the way." She wore an azure three-quarter-sleeved dress with a leather belt, not a ratty hospital gown. She was allowed to have a purse with things like money and keys and makeup inside. She had friends, loved ones. She was Belle. Squeezing Ruby's hand, she made it farther down the corridor than she thought she could and watched Dr. Whale unlock a steel door.

"Mr. Glass? We need you," he said into the dark.

* * *

Charming stretched his leg until his foot reached a nub in the tree trunk wider than two of him. The Lost Boy with the top of his ear missing, Ian, tapped the base of the trunk and bustled off into the darkness to his position. His arms began slow, feeling they each had a massive weight strapped to each of them. Refusing to pant, he straddled a thick branch and scooted until he could see the field where, just to his left, sat the mouth of a cave where, if they could trust these kids, Henry was caged. He held his breath watching through the leaves as Emma dragged Greg through the field, stopping just short of the cave. Hooded figures met her, forming a human barrier between her and the entrance to the cave.

"Tamara! Tamara!" Unsheathing a sword, she held Greg by the base of his neck until one of the figures stepped forward.

"Hi, Emma." Tamara threw back her hood with a smile Charming would have once described as friendly. She stood with one leg out, arms folded, aloof.

"Give me Henry."

"I see you found Greg." With the toe of her boot, she batted his chin until he looked up at her.

"Bring Henry out to me and let him go and I'll give you Greg." Emma maneuvered the sword to where all she had to do was thrust downward and it would plunge into his back. To anyone else, he would have said it would have been too tempting, but he trusted her.

"Greg for Henry? Emma, we don't turn over the President of the United States in exchange for some garbageman."

"Let me see Henry!"

"Miss Swan," another one of the figures approached. He pulled his hood off with two hands, a narrow-faced man with a square jaw, tawny blonde hair.

"Mr. Slight," she growled.

"Had to make sure we would know where to find Henry, didn't we?" His toothy grin shimmered.

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin finished the spell. At last, just a small bagful of fairy dust could propel the entire ship to fly. He stuffed it into a breast pocket on the inside of his coat and knelt down to the drawer just underneath his bunk for the orb to pinpoint the location of the others. He had just the spells in mind to render these opponents nothing more than flies in ointment when anyone would care to look back at this whole misadventure.

"Rumple?"

Almost dropping the orb, he spun around. He knew that voice. He knew the precise probability of that voice being here, zero. And yet at no time as the Dark One did his ears ever play tricks on him.

"Belle?"

She was in the square mirror right above the cabin's basin, the streaks and spots on the glass obscuring her only a fraction. She looked beautiful, the furrowed, agonized expression on her face the only thing he would change. In spite of that, he dashed to the mirror and pressed his hand against its corner, the corners of his mouth turning up. "How?"

"I don't know how much time we have. Mr. Glass is straining himself." She looked to the side at something unseen, and then back at him. "You're in trouble." Licking her lips, she tilted her head so he could see her worry even clearer. "The fairies must be behind all this. I think they're the ones who ordered those people to take Henry."

"I know."

"No, Spencer, King George, you had made a deal with him that he'd spy for you?"

"Yes. The fairies gave Bae the magic bean, Belle. That's why I hated them so."

"The Blue Fairy attacked him. I'm sure she knew about them taking Henry. Even if, when, you come back, you'll be up against her. She told him she knew a way to keep your power from you, and the prophesy you told me about. There's Henry, the boy, and Peter Pan's a boy..."

"Peter Pan's a fairy," he said with a dulled voice. The Blue Fairy, he'd known her pride, her temper, but always believed her to have the same tool Snow White and Charming used when tempted to show their enemies no mercy. Had she remembered the entire time? So she must have been the writer of that ever-important book that Henry had used to solve everything. "Does she know you know about this?"

"Only Ruby and Dr. Whale and now Mr. Glass know," she said. Whale? Victor? Good lords, not that man...priorities, man, he reminded himself.

"Belle, if you had to kill a fairy, if it were that or your death, or the death of someone you cared about, could you do it?" His gentle Belle should have been a hostage negotiator, had all the strength and integrity to rival anyone, but killing? His hands shook at the thought. "Please, Belle. Promise me you would defend yourself however you needed to. I can't live without Bae and you. Could you do it?"

A little nod followed by a more assertive one answered. "Yes, I could. But, how do you kill a fairy?"

"It's not hard. It's not something just anyone would think of or know off the top of their head, but it's far from hard."

* * *

"You think Peter Pan will reward you for giving him a body?" Emma bellowed at all of them. They stood motionless, Charming debating about firing now or sticking to the plan. "People with power don't tend to share it."

"And your Dark One is a better alternative?" Tamara snapped. This Mr. Slight, Slightly, held his arm out to hush her.

"Miss Swan, Emma, this entire multiverse thrives on power, as if a life force dealt it out among the realms, giving some people more than their share," he said. "Good, evil—neither matter. Those who hinder that end up dead, any power they did have returning to the life force that in turn deals it out accordingly. Peter Pan has abilities the likes of you, someone raised in a land without magic, can scarcely imagine. He demands more power, so we help him find it, as he will take power from us otherwise." He neared her, his pointed chin jutting out. "I told you when you gave him up he was a very special child. You not holding onto that power was your own mistake."

Emma lifted the sword, the blade inches from him. His laugh pierced the night.

"You're a bold woman, Emma," Tamara said with a condescending shake of the head. "But you were just plain foolhardy to come out here all alone."

The sound of an arrow slicing through the air whooshed from a tree on the other side of the field, missing Tamara by a hair.

"I'm not alone." Emma grinned, swinging her sword just in time for Slightly to block it with one of his own.

Now. Actually firing the gun was never how he'd imagined it would be. It took not only focus, but relaxation, a gradual pulling back of the trigger, controlled breathing. The first shot deafened him. Unprepared for the recoil, he teetered back but caught himself, watching one of the Lost Ones writhe on the ground howling, clutching their leg. Regina emerged from the other side of the field, just underneath where Snow stood on one of the limbs, sending her arrows zipping through the air, the next one right into the knee of another Lost One. Regina lifted her palms into the air, the ground where two of the Lost Ones stood quaking. Vines broke through the soil and curled around them, coiling and coiling around their legs and waists until they fell over.

The Lost Boys zipped past the fray into the cave. Charming descended as quickly as he could, knowing falling from any height was as good as death. Leaping from the lowest branch, he sprinted into the cave after them, Hook following, stopping at the sight of a Lost One swinging two swords.

"Go."

"You've only got one sword!" Charming yelled, his feet already shuffling backward into the depths of the cave.

"But two weapons." The clanging of swords and, Charming realized, a hook, echoed through the cave, sending the last few bats zigzagging to the nearest exit.

* * *

**A/N: Okay, very scene-heavy, perspective-heavy chapter, I know. There may be only one other in the entire story that uses this format, so don't worry; the rest only rely on one or two points of view, three at the most. The net was a shout-out to _Return of the Jedi_, which I also do not own. So will they get Henry out of there? What will Henry have discovered during this time? I can't tell you except that the summary says rescuing Henry is only the beginning!**


	15. Fourteen

Killian unleashed a wild laugh, inexplicably pleased the Lost One, the normally stoic Curly, mimicked it. Talk about one's weapon being an extension of one's self, he thought. He flicked his wrist, the tip of his hook overlapping the sword. Unable to wrench it free, Curly's eyes widened, losing concentration on the other sword. With a quick lunge and thrust, he disarmed him, the sword spinning right into the cave wall.

He ran him through, not his first, and hoped the others knew that if they truly were transporting all the Lost Boys onto the Jolly Roger, it had no room for captives.

Hurrying down the cave, he heard the raucous chatter of the Lost Boys and followed it. A few lanterns and candles lit the edges. Droplets of water plunked into the start of a river at his left. To his right, he sensed movement in the dark and ran to the sight of David lifting a boy off the ground in the layered, unimaginative Storybrooke clothes and embracing him, a protective, fatherly hold that vied with time.

"Let's go!" David yelled, setting Henry back on his feet and pointing with his sword.

"You came, too?" Henry stopped mid-run and simply stared up at Killian, the epitome of a pleasant surprise. Best lay it on thick, Killian told himself.

"Aye, and we have not been properly introduced. Captain Killian Jones, unless you prefer Hook." He bowed before dashing to the back where the last of the Lost Boys were hurrying out of the cave.

* * *

Snow let another arrow fly, exhaling when she saw it hit a Lost One in the eye. Every battle, every time, she needed to repeat to herself that this kind of killing was necessary. This was not the premeditated, utterly heartless act that was murder. This truly was the only way to bring Henry, and themselves, home.

_"You had said you killed Cora because it was easy. You may believe that, but I'm calling bullshit right now," Emma had said._

_ "What?"_

_ "That was one of the hardest things you ever had to do, wasn't it?" Her daughter had stepped up and immediately became the picture of hesitation, like in the old romance movies where the couple go in for a kiss but one didn't summon up enough courage. Inhaling, Emma had wrapped her arms around her. "I don't care what Regina saw when she saw your heart. No matter how dark it looked, it can't be any darker than mine."_

_ "Thank you," was all Snow could say, tears welling in her eyes. "And I bet your heart is purer than you think."_

Clearing her head, her elbow flew up into the air as she gripped another arrow, stringed it, and sent it to another enemy. It missed one of the remaining Lost Ones, landing inches from his feet. She took it as a sign to scan the fighting for Emma. She and the man, the one she must have known from when Henry was born, locked swords again. One look at his smirk at her daughter's choppy, amateur style, however effective, told Snow the exact place her next arrow needed to hit.

* * *

Chunks of ice rocketed onto the field like shooting stars, pummeling the Lost Ones. Crocodile must have used up his fireballs, Killian thought, catching up with David and the Lost Boys. An explosion of light, pinks and reds and greens, sped across the sky, forcing branches to shake. Everyone froze mid-battle, watching the light dart all around like a drunken firefly.

"That'll be him," he heard Tamara announce from the other end of the field. Peter Pan.

"Get them to the ship!" he ordered David, readying his sword once more. He only heard the beginning of Henry protesting. Regina had killed the henchmen she'd trapped, Snow White the ones she'd hit, so all that remained were Slightly and Tamara, the latter rushing towards where the former and Swan's swords still clashed.

He dodged a block of ice bigger than his head and forced himself to run past the fighting to where Greg still lied bound with muffled swearing. Slicing through the ropes with his hook, he pulled the man to his feet by the lapel of his jacket.

"What, what are you doing?"

"Stay and fight or go back to the ship with the others." He'd once told Swan to try something new, trust. He hoped now was an opportune time to take his own advice.

"Why are you doing this?" Greg blinked back a spray of water from a nearby ice chunk shattering.

"Five on two is better than four on two, mate." He took a dagger from his coat pocket and handed it to him. "And sometimes a man scorned is worse than a woman scorned. Prove me right." He slid back just in time to swat a black rectangular device out of Tamara's hand, the tip glowing blue. Regina covered Snow who was climbing down the tree. Surely once they reached them, they could overpower these two.

The lights settled on a spot just behind the trees, fading at the same time a greenish ball zoomed to them.

It was a fairy, but it was also a boy, a feral, sharp-featured boy who, upon opening his mouth to gnash his teeth at them, retained all his first teeth. His eyes were like cherries, a sweet and yet devious grin across his face. With a flick of his hand, a gust of wind, gales, swept Regina and Snow right into the tree trunks. There were two snaps, leaving Killian only able to hope that wasn't their backs.

"No!" Swan shrieked, flipping the sword in her hand and bringing the handle right down on Slightly's forehead. Stumbling two steps, he slumped into a heap onto the ground. The golden flecks in her eyes appeared again, walking towards the specter fairy with a deathly calm.

He'd realized too late he'd been distracted too long. Tamara spun around and made a break for her black device. Greg reached it first, stooping down and picking it up with his bottom lip jutting out ever so slightly, like a child.

"Greg, Owen," she tried. "We can still go back and destroy magic. All of it can be gone except fairy magic." She gasped when he toyed with her, waving it in front of her face. "I told you that my grandmother had been killed by a werewolf and no one believed me, just like no one believed you. We can go back to Storybrooke and we can start with that slutty werewolf girl, just, just think about what you're doing."

Killian turned his head, the buzz and the death throes enough.

"Swan! You can't kill him with a sword."

Her back to him, she didn't answer, just continued staring at the fairy with her sword in front of her.

"You can't have him," she said, the same white light that had hurled him across the hull emitted from her, hazier than before, slower. He preferred to think it was gaining momentum, packing a punch, rather than weakening.

"You can't kill a fairy," he said, his voice so youthful and carefree it ached to hear it.

Emma's back straightened. She lowered her sword to the ground. Her head cocked in a way as if she was remembering something from long ago.

"I don't believe in fairies."

Peter Pan broke into a scattering of sparkling dust, her white light bursting out of her, sending each grain into oblivion. He lifted his arm to keep the rays from blinding him. Silence signaled him to bring it back down, not even the chirping of a cricket in the distance. He crossed to Emma, the raggedness of her breathing tightening his chest. Every time she used magic that he'd seen, she had that dazed, half-drunk and half-petrified face, but now she just stood frozen, giving a thousand-yard stare at the largest pile of dust.

"Emma, come with me. Let's get Regina and your mother." Holding out his hand, he waited for her to take it. She followed him, taking tiny steps at first before she shook it off and hurried to the treeline. Greg ran after them.

"Mary Margaret? Mom? Mom!?" Sifting through a few fallen twigs and leaves, they barely needed to help Snow White and Regina, both able to sit up, albeit with heavy groans.

"Henry?" Regina hoisted herself up with the chips of wood just barely clinging to one of the trunks.

"David has him," Emma panted. Regina looked ten years younger, a woman ten years younger on the brink of exhaustion.

"I can't magic us onto the ship because I've already done it. Emma, if you would be so obliging?"

* * *

Henry, smudged and with his hair tousled but no worse for wear, only left the arms of his grandfathers to rush to Emma and burrow his face into her torso. Regina knelt, allowing Henry to encircle her with his arm and hold both of them. It left the Lost Boys staring with clueless, fascinated expressions at this boy that had two mothers while they had none.

"Lads!" Killian snapped at them. "Make way to sail! Find hammocks below and then help yourselves to whatever you can find in the galley. Step to!" They ran off at top speed, leaving him to wonder if he'd have been more efficient all those years with a crew of actual children than overgrown ones.

"Everyone hold onto something," Rumpelstiltskin said over the commotion. With all eyes on him, he rotated his wrist. The Jolly Roger sparkled from main mast to rudder with fairy dust. It rose in the air without so much as a wobble, slowly, slowly, slowly rising above the hills until it broke through the star-studded night, leaving Neverland a distant nightmare.

"Not as fast as a plane," Rumpelstiltskin said, using his cane to descend the stairs to the main deck. "And it will still take a day or so to get to Storybrooke, but that's adequate to everyone, I'm sure, and now...Killian," he said with a tremendous smirk. "Your ship can fly."

"Aye, now it can fly," he breathed, steadying his hand to lean over, traces of stardust sprinkled throughout the air. Fancy that, what any captain would want for his ship and his nemesis had just granted it. He allowed himself a smile and followed the Lost Boys down below decks.

* * *

Snow pulled Henry to the galley, rattling off names of food independent of thought. A mother's, grandmother's, eye caught the layer of dirt under his fingernails, the dead gnats and grains of sand trapped in his hair, the skin underneath his eyes more sallow than she'd seen before. She poured a glass of juice and handed it to him and then poured a second one without thinking.

"I'm fine, Grandma, just tired."

"Let her spoil you," Charming laughed, letting his hand plop on Henry's shoulder, giving him a quick, masculine rub.

"You drink all that up, Henry. Did they feed you? Did they hurt you?" Regina pulled the collar of his shirt, checking him.

"I'm okay, guys, really. I just can't believe you're all here. You all found me."

We will always find you, she thought, eyes misting. When they returned home, she would be a grandparent. A day of baking cookies and knitting him sweaters he wouldn't wear without prodding sounded so ideal.

"I need to tell you guys." He'd chugged the juice and picked up the second glass. "I talked to Aurora."

Snow dropped a box of crackers from the pantry. Picking it up, the floor, for a split second, melted into an inferno of sizzling flames. She snapped her eyes shut to rid herself of that memory, that room.

"You're still having dreams from the Sleeping Curse?" Emma gasped, her eyes hardening at Regina.

"Not as much, but every once in a while. They're wearing off for her, too. It's not so bad if you have a friend there." Snow glanced over at Charming and stretched her arm out to him, the final proof this was not a waking dream, revisiting that hell. Able to touch, she turned her attention back to Henry.

"My dad's alive."

"What...what do you mean 'alive'?" Emma choked out. No one moved. Snow bumped her hip on the counter on her way to Emma's side to place her hands on her shoulders.

"He's in the Enchanted Forest. They found him on a beach and are taking him to someone who's supposed to help him. We couldn't talk very long. Heavy sleep was hard here. But he's alive and when we get home, Anton can regrow the beans and we can get to him!" Henry took a breath, his face gaining more and more light. "We'll all be together!"

"That's wonderful news, Henry." Regina spoke first, and that made sense, Snow thought. It wasn't as if it was the man _her_ daughter loved and had her heart broken by was suddenly alive. Of course, she would never wish death on anyone, and Baelfire, Neal, seemed a decent, if flawed man, and his love for Henry was genuine. Neal turned out to be a much better man than the wicked caricature she'd imagined Henry's father would be. She couldn't fault anyone for loving the same people she did. However, if she were asked advice on the matter, and she hoped she would eventually be asked, she would caution Emma about mistaking the past for the future, no matter what feelings might be lingering.

"I'm going to go up on deck and tell Mr. Gold. He'll be so excited!" Henry exclaimed.

"I'll go with you, Henry," she said. Taking his hand, they hurried out to the deck.

* * *

Her cabin door shut, her back against it, Snow held her hand over her heart and sighed. She could feel it, the dark spot, growing smaller and smaller. She'd felt Rumpelstiltskin's joy after seeing the tears in his eyes, how he clutched the rail and then threw his arms around Henry. Empathy was an experience reserved for those with good hearts, she knew, and it wasn't just that she knew exactly how it felt to see one's child after an eternity apart. Perhaps in a way, they could all be together. Ideas of a full, loving...albeit wacky...Thanksgiving ran through her mind. With Charming at the helm, she was nowhere near ready for sleep, so she opened the door and nearly collided with Hook, who was peering into the middle cabin, his face vague.

Chancing teasing, she tiptoed next to him and looked into the cabin. Henry lay asleep in one of the bunks with Emma on her side, asleep and with her head on her son's shoulder.

* * *

**A/N: The source material itself, _Peter Pan_, explicitly states that every time someone says "I don't believe in fairies," a fairy somewhere dies. If Peter Pan's demise seemed a little too easy ("Easy? You call that easy?" cried Han Solo), rest assured the characters need this reunion and breather because some serious stuff is about to go down! **


	16. Fifteen

**A/N: Okay, I don't usually update THIS often. I like to wait a week for the most part, but my goal is to have the entire story posted before the premiere, so that's why it's typically only four or five days between chapters. In this case, it's just three. **

* * *

Emma woke when Regina pulled back the curtain covering the porthole. Sunlight poured right onto her face. Sitting up, she twisted around to avoid disturbing Henry and reached over him for his book. With a yawn, she lazily flipped through the pages, again unsure just what she expected to stumble upon that would suddenly explain everything. All she knew at the moment was that no fairy that had spent time in Storybrooke, in her world, would have come across that whole "I don't believe in fairies" thing without some kind of protection against it.

Feeling eyes all of a sudden, she looked up at Regina giving her a raised eyebrow.

The two had lived in a taxing harmony during the journey, the memory of staring straight into the other's frightened eyes and hoping the self-destruct could be detained still fresh. Emma yawned again and stretched her arms, her fingertips brushing a beam, warm smooth wood...ship shouldn't be growing on you, she thought.

"Good morning," she whispered.

"Morning," Regina answered. Stiff, frazzled head nodding—yep, signs of Regina making an effort. Bail bondsmen, sheriffs...saviors—didn't leave a lot of time for advanced level psychology courses, but Emma had decided ever since she had come back from the Enchanted Forest that her response to Regina making an effort should be positive reinforcement.

"You don't happen to know how long going back this way will take, do you?"

"No," Emma said. "Slower than the way we got here anyway." With a forced laugh, she added, "I guess trading things for beans in your world isn't as bad a trade as it sounds." Hmm, no effort there to be sociable, she saw, watching Regina shift her weight from one leg to the other, biting her lip. "Something on your mind?"

"If we're going to spend another night on this ship, I would appreciate some quality time with my son."

"Sure, I...he was so tired..."

"And you just crawled in with him. Honestly, Emma, I can't compete with you."

"Compete?"

"You're acting more like a big sister than a mother."

Throwing her legs over the bed, she stood up, mentally counting to ten.

"Let's talk out in the hallway." She closed the door behind her, burning a hole into it with her mind first before facing Regina. So this is what she thought Henry wanted to return to, more arguing and "competing" for him? "I thought we were done with this. I have never tried to take Henry from you except for when you do things so terrible that he needs to be taken from you for his own safety. We worked together to find him and I thought we were going to go home together and take things one day at a time. My god, Regina. He's not a puppy dog where we fight over who he sleeps with!"

"No, no, you just try to whisk him off to a completely different land right under my nose," Regina snapped.

"You tried to kill all of us!"

"And your mother killed mine! When is all this 'evil queen' business going to stop? Did you ever think they made me the evil queen?" Her fingers rested against her chest, tears welling in her eyes. "You don't even know what living there during that time was like."

"I know you cast a curse that took away the identities of everyone you didn't like! I know you framed my mother for murder! I know you locked an innocent woman up in a cell for twenty-eight years because she was involved with the wrong guy! I know you killed Greg's father! I know you tried to make Henry think he was crazy whenever he questioned anything, and I'm sure I could go on. Life under you in the Enchanted Forest was probably a big long line of people getting their hearts ripped out..." No, her eyes widened. No, not after she had moved on from that pain... "Graham?"

Regina flinched, her lips drying.

"He said you had his heart and the very night he does something you don't like he dies of a heart attack. You...Henry said you had killed him. You did. Good lord, you did."

"Everything I've done, I was either forced or-"

"Stop! Just stop it! I thought you were finally taking responsibility. You wanted to change because you wanted Henry's love and you have it! You probably always had it, which is more than you deserve! When are you going to start atoning for all this...without an eleven-year-old kid guilting you into it?"

She stomped up to the deck, not wanting to hear a response. She felt she'd waited more than enough for a response. Why? Why, not even twenty-four hours after rescuing Henry, had things suddenly gone back to the way they'd been before? Had none of them learned anything, changed? Quests were supposed to bring people together, all united by a common goal and seeing the best everyone had to offer... Graham's face—damn it, she'd blocked out that horrible moment, pure joy on his face suddenly contorted in shock and torture. He hadn't even died in her arms, gone before he hit the floor, gone before she could do anything but shout his name. And maybe, maybe even if they'd had just one day, hell, maybe she could have loved him. Not many people looked at her the way he had, with that euphoric "I remember."

Emma perched herself near the stern of the ship, out of sight of Regina at the helm. She'd been cut in two, the only possible explanation for this urge to either bask in Henry's love and safety or scan the horizon for shadows. With Peter Pan gone, they would all be gone, and yet she peered through every cloud, their puffy cheerful shapes doing nothing for her.

Neal alive—she should be thrilled. Neal had looked at her that way once, like she was the reason life was worth living. She was happy, but it felt off-key, the relief one would feel for a friend more so than all this True Love business that had seemed forced down her gullet this past year. Childish little Emma, she scolded herself, still hoping dropping the love bomb fixed everything. She loved Neal...Bae...Neal, and probably always would. Hmm, maybe back in the Enchanted Forest, First Love had secondary powers to True Love. Nope, everyone probably just falls once and that's the one that takes. Would she even have declared love if he hadn't been one big swirly vortex of doom away from death? It haunted her dreams, prowled her brain, watching him disappear into a void. How her father must have felt when she and Mary Margaret vanished into one...how she felt when she watched Henry vanish into one...

And yet he'd chosen safety over her, had decided the mere possibility of seeing his father again wasn't worth her. She had no idea what she would be up against and he did, that as a savior she would have power, the thing his father craved. To be fair, Emma thought with a huff, she might have done the same thing. Rumpelstiltskin as a dad, a dad you already left one world because of, sounded...

_"You're lucky you remember your parents, no matter how bad they were," she'd once said, rubbing his back after he'd woken with a jolt, his body covered in a sheen of sweat. He never, ever mentioned his parents, but in dreams, in babbling sleep conversations with himself, they visited him._

_ "It's the other way around, babe."_

_ "Neal, I'd give anything to know who my parents are. At least you know, you're not left wondering." She trailed off before she crossed a boundary, before she insisted they had loved him at some point._

_ "No, if you don't remember, they can be whatever you want them to be." With a quick kiss, he rolled over and tried to fall back asleep._

She would go on a break, a sabbatical, when she returned to Storybrooke. No sheriff work, no discussing going to this land or staying in that one. She would go for long runs in the morning, do something casual and motherly with Henry, maybe something like fishing or...Tai Chi...whatever, and close the day with some fruity girly drink throwing darts at the wall. Yeah. It beat scouting the skies for shadows. If UFO enthusiasts only knew, she thought, the muscles it took to smile stretching.

"Swan?"

So much for the simple life right now, she thought.

"Something chasing us?" Hook asked, amused.

"Would it honestly surprise you if there was?" His eyebrows jumped as if to say "good point." Shifting his weight so it rested on his hand on the rail, he sighed.

"Boy retrieved, everyone safe and sound, True Love alive. If I were you, I'd be elated and here you are waiting for the next misfortune."

"So?" Lighten up, she scolded herself. He's trying to cheer you up a little.

"So is there a story there or do I have to go back and hear what a mammoth is again?"

"What?" she asked.

"In Henry's backpack, on his folder. I asked him what it was and he said it was a mammoth, some gigantic beast that lived in your world thousands of years ago or some such-"

"I know what a mammoth is."

"Well, I didn't and was beginning to feel rather stupid so I decided to go on about my business." Grinning, he waited for her to respond, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Damn him for trying to cheer her up and it working. Melancholia suited her better than admitting that more than once she'd felt while talking to him that they were the only two sane people for miles, or at least the two insane people who best handled being insane...she frowned. A savior's not supposed to have much in common with a wife-stealing pirate...she hated herself for even thinking such a snobby thought. Just last night, with magic and weapons flung at them from every which way, he'd proven he was more.

"Silence again. Well, I do love a challenge." He fumbled around in his coat until he produced a rolled-up piece of paper. "That, that was meant for you but there wasn't really any time to give it to you." Hanging it awkwardly in front of her, curiosity took the better of her and she took it with a suspicious face. She unrolled it to find a small hand-drawn portrait of Henry, so well done she didn't notice her bottom lip dropping or her heart quickening.

"When did you do this? You'd barely seen him."

"Ah, turns out the Queen did in fact have a picture of him handy."

"You, you pick-pocketed her?" Stop being surprised, she yelled at herself. Like you're really able to arrest him right now for picking pockets.

"Took it and finished it before she even ventured out for the Lost Boys," Hook said dismissively. "She never knew it was gone."

"I...thank you." You know, to thank you for playing the gentleman and saving kids and stuff, I've decided not to arrest you for the countless crimes and misdemeanors you've committed since strolling into town in pirate boots...

"I've given some thought to what you had said before," he said, this time looking out straight ahead.

"And did you decide on something?" she asked.

"No." He laughed to himself, one self-deprecating enough to be contagious.

"Three hundred years not ever thinking about how to spend your future kind of means you can go a little easy on yourself." After a second's hesitation, she nudged his side with hers. Opening up to you means you should do the same, she told herself. "You're not the only one who's at an impasse...Killian."

Emma about broke into hysterical laughter at herself, seeing he'd mastered the WTF face even if he'd never heard of it—eyebrows sky-high, eyes not knowing whether to laugh or dance.

"Fine time you remember I have a name!" Unsure now if he was laughing at himself or her, she couldn't say anything. "And what is this impasse of yours...Emma?"

"Should a savior please herself or please others?" Her fingers spread along her face, the sky and clouds now out of focus. He wasn't answering and maybe that was for the best. If anything, a savior should make that decision herself, she thought. And then, some invisible boulder she'd been lumbering about with on her back crumbled into dust. She saved her son, she found a family, she had purpose—she could be elated. Fingers falling back to the rail, she breathed at the blinding blue of the sky surrounding them, the clouds far behind. Minutes ago, the emptiness would have unnerved her.

His jaw tightened, she realized, before she realized her gaze had shifted from the sky to him, noting how his eyes seemed so, so opened now, laid bare. She leaned into him as his head lowered and their lips met somewhere in the middle.

Emma's body all but hummed in anticipation, his kiss slower than she'd thought it would be, and warm, so warm. His hand flew to the back of her head and kept her in place as if he feared she would break away. His fingertips seared her scalp. Gentle and unhurried and yet so, so hungry...

Heavy footfalls from farther along the deck at the steps broke them apart faster than if they'd been electrified. She followed the sound, tucking her lips into her mouth, her tongue running over them. That, that didn't happen. That...she stopped, hoping there was some other reason she was breathless. She couldn't look back, especially when she arrived close to the bow where her father and Henry gazed out. The ship was fast encroaching land. The Lost Boys and everyone else cluttered around.

"David? What is it?" she could finally ask.

"Emma, look out," he said, his arm out. His face a mixture of confusion, worry, and, and glee? "Do you see any power lines? Any skyscrapers?"

The ship traveled over some woods, nothing to get jittery about, she told herself. Storybrooke had always been surrounded by woods, the rich emerald greens from heavy rainfall. Skyscrapers had no place in Storybrooke, but the top of a building should have been visible by now. In the distance, a windmill spun.

"So...we're in Holland by mistake?" Henry asked, glancing up at David. Oh, kid, she wanted to sigh, but couldn't. A high bridge led to all too familiar shambles that had once been a castle.

"We're in the Enchanted Forest," she whispered.

* * *

The ship lunged, ever closer to what Charming hoped would be a smooth landing on a smooth surface. On an overturned crate, he shuffled through scattered papers, fingers twitching to the point he dropped the ballpoint pen a few times.

"Not a good time for you to disappear." He looked up to see Snow closing the door behind her, her brow furrowed. "Henry and the boys are running around the deck like chickens with their heads cut off, Emma looks about ready to hyperventilate. What are you doing?"

"We're back," he said, taking a moment to sigh, to breathe. "Sit down for a second, please."

She sat on their bunk, across from him, skimming the half-thought-out notes he'd written in a frenzy on the papers, her lips tight. They'd ruled together once, briefly.

"Everything we had talked about doing when you decided you wanted to come too isn't just talk anymore. It's an inevitability." Her nod gave him more confidence. "Once we find Neal, we're going to have to rebuild. We're going to have to make this place suitable for everyone to come back...and then find a way for them to come back..."

"Charming?"

He wasn't a million miles away, he was ready to argue, but she didn't elaborate.

"Snow, I know there can't be a good reason why we're here, but...this is our home. This is where we started building a life together. Can't we be happy about it for five minutes?" he sighed, relieved the corners of her mouth stretched into a smile, that her eyes were closed in reverie rather than frustration.

"I forgot that it's been just a few months for me and twenty-eight years for you," she said, her hand reaching across the crate and resting on his, her fingers stroking the delicate bones between his knuckles and wrist. "It's good to be home for me, too, but we still need to take all this one thing at a time."

"I know. I'll, I'll check on our prisoner. Why don't you see if they need help on deck?"

She nodded again and they left the cabin in opposite directions, Charming nearly bumping into Emma. Her back against the wall just out of a ray of sunlight's reach, she froze at the sight of him, her face savoring some secret memory, watching each second of it like she'd never seen it before. It's subtle, he knew from experience, when he saw Snow try on his mother's ring for the first time, how right it looked on her dirtied, calloused finger, how even though they were saying goodbye he wanted nothing more than to just stay and talk to her a little while longer...

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I, I'm fine, I..."

There were times, more than to Charming's liking, that he felt Emma was on the verge of saying something, of letting the walls come down just a little bit...and he wanted to push, wanted to push so badly, but being a father didn't come with instructions, much less a father of an already-grown woman who knew far more cruelty than she ever should have. So, without knowing and without her telling him, all that remained was to resort to guessing.

"You know, I know that the Enchanted Forest probably didn't seem all that enchanting when you were here..."

"Oh, no, well, it didn't, but..."

"You're never going to have to be left in this world alone." He knew that wasn't it, but, gods, if anyone needed that kind of reassurance. "So if you want to talk about anything, if you have a question you think is really stupid, just, just know your mom and I would be more than happy to help you and whatever we're going to be up against, we're here for you."

"Thanks." She nestled just a little in his arms, her forehead pressed into his collarbone. So much is on your mind, Emma, he thought. Hopefully some of it's good.

* * *

**A/N: So the Enchanted Forest! We're all becoming so well-traveled! Coming up, another letter and then a glimpse to what all is going on in Storybrooke. Hint: they're not having an easy time over there.  
**


	17. Sixteen

_ Dear Belle,_

_ I've worried for some time the gods or whoever truly runs this multiverse view our lives as being little clay dolls to mold and shape and eventually break, yours on one side of their table and mine on the other. I had begun to hope I would see you again. Speaking to you through the mirror was more than I ever could have expected and now I fear it's all over. We've returned home. Real home._

_ I couldn't sense it before, my mind on the spell to master flight, the fighting, and then just the joy of recovering Henry and the news he told us—Bae is alive! And he is in this land. It's for that reason everyone will believe I am responsible for our detour, but I'm not. An enchantment has been placed on the ship, before it ever went into the portal. I would be inclined to blame Greg or Tamara, but after what all you told me, the Blue Fairy seems the likelier candidate. At least it's rather validating since I've always despised the fairies._

_ As much as I miss you, I'm glad you can't see me as I am now. I awoke to find in the mirror the greenish-gold coloring and leathery, flaky texture that had overtaken my body in this land before. My eyes are like fish bowls again, although the limp is gone. I didn't need to look out a porthole for an explanation._

_ Miss Emma Swan received a rather nasty surprise, but I would say she deserved it for barging into my little cabin. One look at me and she shrieked and tumbled back into the door. Let's not be too hard on her, however. She inherits her tact from her father._

_ "Holy shit! What the hell happened to you?"_

_ "Oh this? Well, it's not an allergic reaction I can promise you that!" I had to be careful here. The power coursed through my veins faster and with more vigor than it ever did in Storybrooke, even after I brought magic back. I wanted to leap right over her and pounce from bulkhead to bulkhead like a panther. _

_ Our Majesty reached us first, which is rather disconcerting as I would have preferred Emma's parents or even Hook to have explained it to her as he and she seem to have a calming effect on one another._

_ "This again?" Folded arms, unruffled, always a hint of a smirk—there's our Regina! "Emma, this is-"_

_ "Rumpelstiltskin!" I bowed, which disturbed her more than if I'd snarled at her. "Speechless, dearie? That's a first for you, isn't it?" I had to compose myself. Before, the drive to find Bae kept me grounded and made me discipline myself. But the thrill of knowing he and I were in the same land and that nothing, absolutely nothing, could keep me from him forced me to try a little harder. Fragments of various futures, names, so many names...fantasies of what all I could do spiraled around in my head. We would have to get moving and for the good of my soul, for the good of us, find a way out of this land as soon as possible._

_ "You brought us back here so you could have the full scope of your powers, didn't you, you son of a bitch?" Regina asked._

_ "What, what's up with Mr. Gold?" Henry asked, his two mothers doing their darndest to shield him from me. _

_ "Uh..." was all Emma could choke out._

_ "Careful, Henry, you broke her brain!" I laughed. "Now, come. We shall land this ship and find my son."_

_ "Are you...okay to do that?" Emma asked. I really don't know what she could have been struggling to find comparisons to, but it wasn't as if I needed a designated driver. The power had been so dormant compared to now, and the first thing that was imperative to everyone was that I make sure the one person who could keep it in check knew to keep it in check._

_ "Your Royal Majesty, if you would be so good as to take the tyke elsewhere, I must speak with my protege."_

_ "There's no way in hell I'm your protege, magic or not!"_

_ "You wound me, Miss Swan! And here not long ago you had insisted we were family!"_

_ She nodded to Regina to take Henry out. _

_ "Say what you're going to say and then let's get going."_

_ "Now we're talking, dearie. All I want is to make sure you're fully aware of your power and are willing to use it." I rattled incoherent sounds at her when she opened her mouth to speak. "Nuh uh, wasn't finished. You are in the land of your birth now. You have another rescue to participate in, and you being the epitome of True Love may be the only thing that can help Bae."_

_ "Me? What about you? You're supposed to be limitless," she argued. Argue, argue, argue. Did the woman ever leave adolescence?_

_ "More or less," I said, beginning to feel like myself again. "True Love, however, can break any curse, and..."_

_ "You keep saying I'm the epitome of True Love. That's the source of my magic?"_

_ "Now you're finally getting it. People from our world aren't born with magic. They are born with a knack for it, or they are not. Those with the ability must practice, practice, practice as the adage goes if they ever want to do anything with it. The love your parents have for each other is so strong, though, it manifested itself in you in ways no one has ever seen before. Throw in how strong your love for certain parties is, your boy, for example, and you are an anomaly. You have been able to do more with magic than people who have studied it their entire lives have done."_

_ "That just means the price for using it will be higher," she said._

_ "Some things are worth paying a price."_

_ "So you're saying just be on my guard and do what I have to do to help Neal and the people helping him?"_

_ "Let's just say Bae won't be happy to see me this way."_

_ "Yeah, I don't think anyone's happy to see you that way." She paused. "Then...you didn't bring us here?"_

_ "No, dearie. I suspect others."_

_ She stormed out, looking like a storm cloud, I might add. Running after her without a limp exorcised some of this rush I was feeling. Fury in others is something I took a perverse delight in, not only because it made them more susceptible to my manipulations, but also for the sheer energy it creates. You know as well as I do that good things, love and hope, especially, give off energy, but a quicker, more seductive feeling is fury, the junk food of human emotion. She had dragged Greg to the main deck in front of everyone and it was quite amusing, them looking back and forth at her and me like a tennis match._

_ "Why are we here? Did you do this?" She jerked him by his lapels._

_ "No! I don't know any of this. We were just supposed to take your son and go."_

_ "You better tell me the whole story, and keep in mind I know when someone is lying to me." Her eyes burned into his. "How's a guy who hates magic get in league with Peter Pan anyway?"_

_ "It all started when my dad died," he said, causing all eyes again to fall upon Regina. It's grand fun when one doesn't have to do a thing to torment another but watch another. "I hated magic. I told everyone I could what she did, the cops, child welfare people, the press, and no one believed me. So I was shuffled around in the foster care system for the rest of my childhood."_

_ Ah, the Savior's eyes had softened. A ship of orphans. That's what we are._

_ "Once I was eighteen, I decided I'd do everything I could to find my dad and master all this, sort of become a Van Helsing guy. I joined a ghost hunting team thinking that would be the best foot in the door, and that's when I met Tamara. Tamara believed me. She said she was part of an organization that was determined to rid our world of magic. It was a secret society, the Masons had nothing on it, top scientists and doctors and important people all over the world were a part of it." Greg continued. "I'd gone to all these places and seen all these things and then finally the order came to go to Storybrooke. That was the order I'd been waiting for. I was supposed to get in and gather evidence of magic."_

_ "And was hitting me with a car part of this master plan?" Hook asked, steely-eyed the whole time. _

_ "No, hitting you was not part of the plan."_

_ "Neither was all of us choosing to help you at our own risk," our gallant Prince Charming brought up._

_ "Look, I wound up here and hospital or no hospital, I was going to do my job. I took pictures, listened in, and reported it all back to Tamara, who was still working on Neal. It wasn't until we had sent everything in that our orders changed to finding Henry."_

_ "You didn't find that suspicious?" Emma blurted._

_ "Not in the least. I was going to find out what happened to my father or die trying. Tamara explained the closer we got that the organization had misled me, that it was determined to get rid of magic, just not their own magic."_

_ "What's the Blue Fairy's role in all this?"_

_ Clever girl. She must have deduced the fairies had something to do with all this as she and I never exactly sat down and chatted about it._

_ "She was Peter Pan's Number Two, the second-in-command. But we all knew she was out for herself. No one said anything because they were afraid Peter Pan wouldn't believe them, Mr. Barrie, as far as I was concerned. That was the name of who we sent all the data to. I should have seen that one. If she brought us here, then you can bet it's so she can get her hands on Henry for herself."_

_ "Did you know who I was when we met in the forest?" Henry asked him._

_ "No. Sorry. I was just trying to help out then." Greg gave him a sad, pitiful face. "I'm sorry you're involved with all these fairytale monsters, kid. If I had my way, none of them would be around."_

_ "Well, now you see where genocide gets you," Emma said, squatting and looking him right in the eye. Part of me, the Dark One, wanted to see her reach in and yank his heart right out and crush it right in front of him. I'd have done the same to Tamara myself. "You're not only stuck with all us magic people, but you're in our home court now, too. You like Henry so much because he's 'normal,' then you help us find his dad and get the hell out of here."_

_ So we embark on another mission. The orb revealed Mulan, Aurora, and Philip, the two first ones associates of Emma and Snow White's apparently, took Bae back to the beanstalk in hopes of finding another bean or a compass or both. I fear that it will not be as simple as going up the beanstalk and opening another portal. _

_ Belle, if it is at all possible for us to send our thoughts to one another, you must find Anton and see about the possibility of there being just one more bean. If we come up empty-handed then I humbly request you use it and come to us. Offer the people of Storybrooke a choice to return. I don't know who would take it and who would choose to stay, but I do not know of any other possibility of us seeing each other again if neither of us can move from where we are. I also worry about the prophesy. Saving Henry in Neverland did not prove to be my undoing, but he is part of our group here and we are in pursuit of my son. _

_ My darling Belle, if everything goes as well as it can and you come here and we can all be together, I will ask you to give me True Love's Kiss as you once tried to do. I cannot suppress the urges the power instills in me for long and all it will do is drive away everyone I care about. If I perish on this journey, I want you to know you can do anything. You should find a way to see the world and have adventures as you wanted, without letting fears or doubts or the past stand in your way. _

_Rumpelstiltskin_

* * *

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed! I appreciate them and am always hungry for more! So I humbly request, if you are reading and you like it so far, or even if you don't, send some feedback my way.  
**


	18. Seventeen

Ruby turned the chairs upside down and stacked them on top of the tables, the clock ticking and the radio giving a static-infested rendition of some Frank Sinatra song Granny liked the only sounds. As crowded as the diner became, the floor seldom required more at closing time than a quick sweep and mop. Granny wiped down the burners, checked the sinks for any traces of food a hungry germ-ridden mouse might consider a jackpot, and would turn the lock when they were all done.

A sudden rapping at the door made her jump, lost in thought and the lyrics to "You Make Me Feel So Young." Any other time, she turned a late-night customer away with a gentle reminder of what time they opened in the morning, but this was Victor's scent, heavy with worry and...oh no. Grief.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked, flinging the door open for him. He looked empty, pale.

"I lost a patient."

"I'm so sorry." She threw her arms around his neck. People didn't get him and she almost wished someone could see him now, caring.

_"Who is he, Ruby?"_

_ "Who, Granny?"_

_ "The new guy. Gotta admit, you seeing just one is a lot better for business than when you used to take off all the time seeing, well, Storybrooke."_

_ "A doctor."_

_ "A doctor! Moving up in the world!" She'd meant it as a joke, but Ruby could see the little gleam in her eye all the same. "Which one?"_

_ "Victor Whale."_

_ "Oh." _

_ That was that._

"No, I, I have to tell you..." She led him to a table where she pulled down one of the chairs for him to sit. She'd always imagined doctor coats smeared in blood with booze in both hands when they lost patients, but Victor just looked sick. "It was Spencer."

"What?"

"Spencer's dead. Somebody smothered him with his own pillow." He laid his head on her arm that had been bracing him.

"Wouldn't, wouldn't security cameras have caught what happened?" she asked. Think logically.

"Oh, you would think so, but they knew what they were doing. The camera had been disconnected. I...Red, I asked my staff first. I had to. I'm sure that goes against substitute sheriff policies..."

"You didn't do anything wrong!" she said.

"But then do you know how many people go in and out of a hospital in a day? It's not just doctors and nurses. There are orderlies, security guards, the cooks, volunteers, people visiting other patients, there's billing and coding..." He took a breath, falling back more into the chair. "I swear if one of them had to go, I would have picked him, but...son-of-a-bitch, he was my patient! Hey, uh, you have an alibi, right?"

"When did it happen?"

"The camera shut off right at 2:30 this afternoon. When I found him at four, he'd been dead about an hour, a little more." His hands joined where his head rested on her arm. "Dead. Just..."

Ruby leaned down and held him, held a man who so feared and loathed death he'd made it his mission to eradicate it...only to learn too well the consequences of when people tried to do that. Wow, and so few people have actually died here, she thought...

"You've got an alibi, right? In case someone starts poking around?"

"I'm good, worked here all day," she said. "

"Belle?"

"We lucked out. She stopped in here for lunch at 1:30 and worked on, I don't know, mayor stuff, busy day, till, like three. And you know her. Wait...volunteers?"

"The hospital has volunteers. They're in and out all the time."

Yeah, in and out of your bed not so long ago. Cool it, she told herself. A jealous wolf is nothing fun. And now you have a crime to solve. "Any nuns volunteer?"

"Quite a few. Mother Superior herself comes in, has the wing he was in a lot." He stared at her. "Is she a suspect?"

"You feel like staying up all night? Not like that."

"Ruby, what's going on?"

"I think you, me, and Belle need to compare notes. Tonight."

* * *

Ruby pounded her fist into the trunk of the tree, ants pouring this way and that to avoid her fist. She'd spent the night at Belle's apartment, refusing to leave a stricken, distraught friend who whimpered in such a broken voice about not knowing if through a mirror would be the last time she and her love spoke to each other. Had it been any other friend, like one who hadn't been a mental patient, she would have been tempted to ask Victor for a sedative. Her fist pummeled the trunk again. Helpless should not be a word to describe a wolf, any wolf, she thought. Snow gone—pow, Belle done being inconsolable only this morning—pow, an innocent kid taken, Billy still not avenged—pow, pow.

Panting, she shook out her knuckles and ran back into town, her hoodie damp in sweat. Her legs pulled her in the direction of the convent, her nose picking up the familiar scent of blood, just, not familiar for around the convent. She stopped right in the middle of the street and faced the steps. Yep, unmistakable, blood. Lurking onto the grounds, she tiptoed near the shrubs along the perimeter all the way to the back. The smell ripened, Ruby's pupils dilating by instinct. Squatting down between two of the larger shrubs, she huddled her knees to her chest and opened her ears, knowing the faint muttering she heard could sharpen if she only concentrated.

"Useless in the old world and useless in this new one."

That came from the basement. On all fours, Ruby lined up with the wall of the convent, the basement window right in front of her. One, two, three...she peeked in. Through a few streaks, she saw Mother Superior with her arms folded, her gray sweater catching every mite of dust.

"Broken vows, cavorting with dwarves, Nova, you have so much to learn."

"Please! Mother Superior, please! Why are you doing this?" Ruby didn't dare press her face closer to the window. The sound of flesh being smacked followed by a scream forced her to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming herself.

"Tell me what you told that dwarf! Tell me what he tells you about his friends! Where have they gone?"

"Who?" Nova screeched.

"Snow White! Prince Charming! Their little brat who doesn't even get yet that she's a princess! Does he know where they are!"

"No! No, no one does. No one can find their grandson. No one can find the Queen or Rumpelstiltskin. Mother Superior, please let me go!"

Another nauseating smack hit Ruby's ears. Transform, she willed herself. Come on! She'd tried to change at will so many times and she'd felt the stirring in her body, little buds of ears poking out the top of her head, a tail bulging at her end, but nothing more than that.

"Nova, you've been down here for a while and you can be down here even longer if need be," Mother Superior said, her voice still sounding serene and wise.

"I don't know anything!"

"Enough! Henry was taken and his family went after him." Mother Superior disappeared from view, heading towards where Nova's voice was coming from.

"Where?"

Mother Superior laughed.

"Second star to the right and straight on till morning, you stupid little fairy! Peter Pan could have a bigger body, one that can contain magic. Even mine isn't as strong as the Mills' boy's lineage has made his. And if they defeat him, which they won't, the body can belong to me."

"Mother Superior." Nova's voice still wobbled, but a few heaving breaths had calmed her a little. "This is insane! He's just a child! He doesn't deserve to die just so someone else can have more power. You, you don't know what you're saying." Ruby prepared to hear another smack. "Peter Pan or whoever you're talking about can't want an innocent child. You can't want an innocent child. You would have killed him a long time ago!"

"But I didn't know until just recently he was also the Dark One's grandson!" she snapped. "Unlimited power, Nova. Just think of that! The fairies could rule this land and the Enchanted Forest once the next batch of seeds gets planted. No humans running everything, no Rumpelstiltskin to contend with. Choose this." Ruby ducked down when she saw Mother Superior crossing back into view, pulling a pair of scissors out of a drawer. She disappeared again. "Choose to go with fairies on this one. We waited and worked and finally that 'innocent child' has been born. If not, I know a few games we can play until we're ready to go meet them."

Ruby leaped to her feet and stumbled back so fast she tripped, thudding right onto her rear. Scrambling back up, she sprinted back into the street and ran without stopping for Belle's apartment.

* * *

Belle kissed the scroll with all the instructions written on it. A lock-pick spell didn't need to just work on the shop's door. Of course, she reminded herself upon entering King George's house and slipping off her shoes on the mat, nothing she found without a warrant could be admissible in a trial, but it could be a lead to something that could.

There was precious little to search, a hat rack, only two coats in the front closet with an umbrella stand. Two brown leather recliners and a coffee table made up the living room. Unsure if she could summon up enough courage to climb the staircase just yet, she turned into the kitchen, no photos, no paintings on the walls. A sudden hooting stopped her heart, leaving her just barely able to stifle a scream. His clock had pictures of birds, a large Great Horned Owl's call noting the hour. Easy, Belle, easy, she mouthed to herself. Fighting off a nervous laugh, she opened drawer after drawer, rummaging through envelopes, paper clips, address books. A stack of index cards spilled onto the linoleum, scattering throughout the kitchen floor. Klutz, she scolded herself. Taking a knee, she raked them to her, stopping when she found one with writing.

_A pinch of fairy dust, a chicken claw, a lizard's eye... _Rumpelstiltskin hadn't let her into his workspace as a rule, but on more trying days, his work followed him from one corner of the castle to the other, leaving her to ask whether he wanted the piles to stay there or to assemble them into one gigantic pile that could go onto the dining table as a centerpiece. It took a week or two before that cracked a smile out of him. The list of...ingredients continued all the way down to the bottom of the card. Flipping it over, she found "..._will slice through any man clean through._"

No. She shook her head no. He'd enchanted a blade to chop poor Billy clean in half? How...why...that made it worse somehow. Relieved she'd worn gloves, she stashed the rest of the cards back into the drawer. Hopping back to the entryway, she slipped into her shoes and stepped outside, using the spell in reverse to lock the door. A slight buzz vibrated at her hip. Good thing she'd set her phone on vibrate or she might have relived the owl surprise. Clearing her throat, she brought the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

"Belle, where are you?"

"I'm, well, I just finished breaking and entering..."

"Meet me at your apartment right now. I'm already here," Ruby panted. "Please. I stumbled onto something."

"Sure." I found something too, she'd wanted to say, but she'd gotten the feeling that was not the thing to say to someone who sounded so near hysteria as Ruby had sounded at that moment.

* * *

**A/N: I don't think I should have to restate this much, but I do not own OUAT. Please leave a review! Coming up: embarking into the Enchanted Forest. This ALWAYS goes well for people, right?**


	19. Eighteen

**A/N: I wanted to take a quick time-out and explain why Regina-centric chapters haven't been as prominent as others. I really enjoy the character, but I just felt the spotlight was on her SO much in Season 2 that it actually did her character damage. When she had about six episodes and Emma had one and Charming had zero, there is something off-balance. I loved her in Season 1 and she was such a complex character with only one or two centrics. I feel that Season 2's biggest problem was what was done with Regina. So...since this is a kind-of Season 3, I decided to scale her back a little and work with what had already been set up-that she was only beginning to realize what she had done to everyone and was willing to make sacrifices to make up for it...instead of just expecting everyone to go along with her without lifting a finger. **

**Anyway, that is my little rant. We will see her point of view a little more often in this second part of the story. OUAT belongs to Adam&Eddie, not me.**

* * *

Regina twitched, the twelve Lost Boys gathering around her. She refused to ask now if this world was home for any of them. They probably didn't even remember and they probably were all from the Land Without Magic. Stepping off the ship onto the spongy beach, she couldn't tear her eyes from the castle, now in ruins. The curse did that. Her curse did that. It would all be so easy...find a way to send the others back and keep Henry and herself here. Magic no longer unpredictable, once more as reliable as the tide—even the air smelled better here, a little sweeter, like apples and pine.

"Okay, Henry, where did Aurora say they were?"

Ironic it should be Snow's voice bringing her back to reality. Snow...stuck on a boat with Snow and everyone...a wave of nausea swam its way from her stomach all the way to her throat.

"Mom?" Henry ran to her, both his hands on her arm.

"I need, I just need a little air, that's all. Being back here." With a forced smile, she marched to the other end of the beach, her back to the ruins.

Sure she was out of earshot, she opened her mouth and sucked in as much air as she could. Who was she? All those years, she'd told herself all those deeds, the deaths, the lies, the curse, were but means to an end, the end of a little girl who didn't know how to keep her mouth shut. Conscience stopped nagging her. Former opponents cowed down to her. Anyone's master plan could be thwarted with just some quick thinking and an exercise of her power. And then...she no longer felt like a person so much as a tree, and one by one, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow, Leopold, Frankenstein, Jefferson, Charming, Emma, Owen, and Mother, especially Mother, chipped and sawed away at her until she no longer recognized herself as a villain or a hero, just...remains. Regina wanted nothing more at that moment than to sink into the sand and burrow her palms in it and swear to never leave this land again. She'd once been a lady, ninth or so in line to the throne, living in a comfortable estate with horses...had Henry ever seen that person? Even before he knew Storybrooke was different?

I don't want to leave, her mind kept repeating. I can't leave again.

"Mom?" Henry rushed to her again, his hands on his knees. "Mom, are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm sorry, Henry. I...it's been so long since I've been here." Summoning up a smile, she brushed his hair out of his eyes. "It must be a great adventure to you."

"I get it. It's home to pretty much everybody," he said, shrugging, concern still in his eyes, but, for eleven, he could shield emotion as good as any scarred adult. He'd been around enough, that was for sure, she thought. For a moment, she wished it had been home for him, too. "The other kids are worried."

"They'll stay with me. I'll protect them." Your son's well-being. Your son's well-being. Your son's well-being. "Your grandmother asked you a question."

"They were going to the beanstalk," he said, tugging on her sleeve until they returned to the rest of the group. She saw Emma and Snow share a "what next" look. "She said they knew someone who might be able to help."

"Anton," Emma breathed.

"But he's not there anymore," Snow said.

Regina didn't know who this Aurora girl was, but she already detested her.

"Walking into a trap, unwittingly choosing your own doom," Rumpelstiltskin sang out, all eyes on him. "Well don't you see? If the fairies brought us here, they knew we would go poking around." He inhaled a few times, Regina able to see some sanity clawing its way through. "Bae is the bait, bait they didn't even have to set. It's all so they won't have to look for Henry. They will already know where he is. Sometimes the laziest plan is the best."

"We'll have to split up," she said. She wished for the spellbook still at the house. They all looked at her, faces of denial, refusal, fear. Well, she wouldn't be the Evil Queen if she wasn't used to all that. "One group will have to climb the beanstalk and help Baelfire and the other group will have to hide and defend Henry."

"But to climb the beanstalk you need..." Emma trailed off and looked over at Hook. "The climby-thingies." She entwined her fingers around her wrist.

"Sorry, lass, I'm unfamiliar with that term," Hook said, managing a silent laugh. Great. Great time for all this.

"You know what I'm talking about."

"I do, but I want to hear you say it again." A beat. "I no longer have them. I gave one to you and the other..." His eyes followed his entire head swaying in Regina's direction. "Not exactly something you'd regard as a keepsake, am I right?"

Rolling her eyes, she turned to Rumpelstiltskin. "You could magic a team up a beanstalk and back down again, couldn't you?" He grinned at her, a mouthful of knives in his imp form. She shuddered, disgusted she'd once been so used to his appearance. "Then." She breathed, closing her eyes and concentrating on her lungs, on her heartbeat. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but, Emma, take Henry with you."

"What?" Emma ran up to her.

"You have the most powerful magic of anyone here. You'll be the best equipped to protect him."

"You're, you're serious."

"Yes, try not to sound so shocked. Go somewhere near the base of the beanstalk and hide out. The others and I will go up and save Baelfire and your...acquaintances."

"Friends," Emma corrected her. She patted Henry's back. "Ready to see some of the countryside, kid?"

There. She'd made the right choice. And if anything happened to her, he still had a mother. She gulped.

"You're going to help save my dad?" Henry asked her, his eyes brimming with tears. "I want to help."

"If it's a trap, sweetie, we can't run that risk." He rushed to her, throwing his arms around her waist. All at once, flashes—clapping and cheering after potty-training, first days of school, putting his face into a pool and blowing bubbles for the first time. Inhaling back the tears, she folded her arms once they released each other and peered right into Emma, when she usually tried to look through her. "You have him?"

"You have them?" She cocked her head back at the Lost Boys.

"I don't have much of a choice."

* * *

"I'm sorry."

"For what? Not being on the same page as Neal and Aurora and all of them?" Emma asked, squinting. "Not expecting world-crossing mind reading powers from anyone here...except maybe Henry."

"No, I've been doubting you. Tamara, the Blue Fairy. You were right and I should have supported you better. It was my fault I wavered, not yours." She held out the book to her. "It was all in here. "You two hang onto it. You're the ones who always find the answers in it."

"Thanks, but..." She stowed the book under her arm and looked down at Henry before bringing her eyes back up to her. "You don't have to apologize."

"I do. Emma, you don't know how I felt when Mulan was about to chop the beanstalk down. Now we're all going back to that same place, I want you to know how much I trust you, how much faith I have in you."

Profuse apologies led to never knowing when to stop, Snow thought, clamping her lips together before more words took the meaning from the ones already said. Some things can't be pushed, or even commented upon. They just have to unfold. She patted Emma's hand, hopeful she would take that as they would meet up to hug later, not that she didn't want to.

Filling up bottles from a nearby spring, re-stringing bows, taking a few bites of crackers before the journey, Snow hoisted the backpack up onto her shoulders once again, several pounds lighter now after dropping off the book. But now, she bit her lip. Oh, she was not looking forward to this conversation, but it was the last thing she could do to protect Henry before they split up.

"Hook." Such a surreal moment, hearing her own voice speak before she could change her mind.

He turned towards her, more swagger than she'd have liked.

"I want you to go with Emma and Henry to the base of the beanstalk." There, said. Like ripping off a bandage...stop giving me that confused look, she willed him. Of course, that did nothing. "You knew exactly how to get to it before and we followed you. I'm not sure I would know the way off the top of my head, let alone in these conditions." He glanced over at their direction and then back at her, face too unreadable for her liking. "I know her magic is strong, stronger than probably anything we've ever known and she should probably be here to control Rumpelstiltskin, but we need that magic to guard Henry. It's strong magic, but she's going to rely on what she knows first. She'll fight first. And I do not want her to be outnumbered."

Oh, why wasn't he saying anything? Innuendo poured out of his mouth like clockwork ordinarily. She could hear it, a slimy why-should-I that was not yet being voiced. So then, she knew. She'd known before, but she knew without a doubt now. Indeed, some things can't be pushed...but sometimes they need to be commented upon... Snow lowered her voice. "I know you care about her and I think you care about Henry and I'm right about this." She glanced over in her daughter's reaction where Charming had one arm around her and was kissing her cheek.

"As you wish," he said, casually, so if someone overheard they might find it ironic or resentful. Then, managing a grin and an altogether less serious demeanor, he held up his hand. "Swan! Do you remember the way or are you wishing we'd left a trail of crumbs the last time?"

"I've heard the story enough times I think I'd be able to find it," Henry said.

"Good lad! That's a lively attitude."

"Why are you coming?" Emma asked.

Don't sell me out, don't sell me out.

"Why, your thoughtful mum asked me to and I do not turn a lady down."

Thanks ever so much, Snow thought, blushing and giving nothing but a wave as she headed for the other direction at a brisk pace. To catch up with the others, she told herself.

Charming hustled over to her and, holding her hand, led her over to Rumpelstiltskin.

"Let's go get this over with."

"Yes indeed, dearie. Let's start the hike!"

"We're walking?"

"Of course! I'm finally free of my limp, after all! Have to break in the new and improved version of me," he giggled. "And," he hissed. "You will not be expecting me to be at your beck and call while we're here and oblige your every request because the more a Dark One uses magic..."

"The greater the price?" she tried.

"That, and the price just may be the non-Dark One part of me." Face sullen, his eyes seemed a fraction more human now. "I can't go mad here, not when we're so close to Bae." He threw on a smirk, added some flourish. "Still planning on taking part in this little debacle, dearie?"

"Our child escaped the curse because of you. We're just returning a favor," Charming said, sword at his side, crossing into the forest. Like old times, Snow thought, looking back at Greg, Regina and a single-file line of children behind her like ducklings. Well, kind of.


	20. Nineteen

_ He'd hobbled down every hallway in this labyrinth full of sick people, the handcuffs dangling from his wrist. Killian had kept one eye on the blue jiggling mess someone must have mistaken for food...else why was it on a plate...and one eye on the only person he knew he could believe._

_ "What's this?" A lovely mixture of something appropriately called pain killers dulled the realization he'd been ungentlemanly in interrupting Swan and her mother's discussion. But this substance didn't allow for courtesy. "I found it on the tray." And there goes a bit of the pain killers, he thought, leaning against the wall. Maybe wandering around was a bad choice..._

_ "Really?" Funny how her eyes alternated from piteous to anger. Anger? Why...oh, the restraints._

_ "Pirate!" He held up his arm to show off the handcuffs. Really, no one had answered his question. "What the bloody hell is this?"_

_ "Jello," she said. Oh, of course, because that's something just anyone not from around here would know, he glared at her._

_ "It's food. You eat it," Snow White added, just as tired and irritable-looking as her daughter. But then, he had no reason to disbelieve them._

_ "I thought it was a hallucination." He caught a leggy brunette out of the corner of his eye. Well, if two presumably noble and kind women would pay an injured man no heed, then he could focus his attentions elsewhere. And she was quite lovely. "Well hello, you're quite real, aren't you?" He threw in a grin._

_ "Go eat your Jello," Swan snapped, taking his arm and pushing him back down the hall. _

_ "Not jealous are we-" Now the room should not be blurring...should definitely not be blurring. Ow, ow, ow. _

_ "Hang on." Even though it echoed a little in his brain, he could make out the change in tone, concern. She hoisted him up as best she could, but his torso refused to twist. His legs refused to pick up a pace, or any pace. _

_ Before he could take in any faces in the hall or wall hangings, he could feel his bed, sitting on the edge of it, Swan squatting and waiting for his face to give her some sign he wasn't going to lose consciousness. With a breath, he swung his legs up and let his body sink back into the bed. _

_ "What the hell is wrong with you?" There was a sigh right beforehand, a sigh of relief._

_ "Sorry, darling, but it was a pressing matter."_

_ "I had them put you in this room so Gold wouldn't kill you here on the spot!"_

_ "That doesn't explain the handcuffs, though, does it?"_

_ "Yeah, not making the same mistake twice." She cuffed him to the bed again, only higher. His eyelids fell closed, only for him to snap them back open one more time. A little jaunt down a corridor should not be so agonizing. _

_ "You may want to die, but I'd rather you didn't," she said, quietly, not looking him in the eye. Dead Guy of the Year, she'd called him. Killian wanted to tease, wanted to give any indication possible that someone wanting him to be alive was a pathetic sentiment despite it being the most he'd gotten out of anyone in so long. But his eyelids were growing too heavy...it took an effort to move his lips and tongue into coherent words..._

_ "Do you promise that Jello is food?"_

_ "Well, I'm not going to lie, it's not great food, but it's edible. I'll let them know to bring you something nicer." She was laughing, smiling. Poor Swan should be home in bed she looked so bedraggled and hauling him this way and that was no help._

_ "I'll stay here so they'll know where to find me." Ah, Percoset, the nectar of the gods was able to work its magic now that he was lying still, Swan's figure little more than a silhouette to his eyes now. "You're beautiful even when you're running on no sleep, you know that?"_

_ "That's pretty bad flattery, but on a night like this, I'll take it," was the last thing he heard before he fell back asleep._

* * *

"...and this, this is on this page, the Hansel and Gretal story!" Henry had held his book out in front of him like a map pointing to row of trees after row of trees, so certain they matched the illustrations. For Killian, such enthusiasm was amusing. He really couldn't blame him, poor boy had been stuck in the same town for too long. At his age, Killian had already traveled to exotic lands, without aid of portals, granted, but he'd seen enough of Storybrooke to know enduring eleven years there would make anyone stir-crazy.

Swan avoided him...and he'd be lying if he hadn't quite been avoiding her. She was playing some kind of game with her son, calling out page numbers and then he'd flip to them and see if they'd passed whatever was in the picture or something to that nature, with a tone of mild disbelief, he'd noted. Like she still had some difficulty that all this was real. It was subtle, though, and gentle enough that Henry wouldn't pick up on it. No, they ambled along laughing and asking each other questions like two peas in a pod.

It made one feel a little left out.

Damn Snow White, he thought. She'd manipulated him somehow, and here he'd thought her incapable of such treachery. She had killed Cora, you stupid ass, he reminded himself. Yes, but Cora had been an altogether different breed of madness that had been badly in need of extermination. He did not fear her murderess; he congratulated her. Even at the expense of his revenge, he could admire a well-played move when he saw one. A bit different when he was the victim in all this. Bad form.

And still he listened in on all of it, her laugh like an ocean breeze, richer since it wasn't a sound he heard often. Ah, well, he smiled. A mother and son should be peas in a pod, and they'd been apart long enough...

"Henry, do you know how to play Pendulum?" he threw out, recalling having to learn that game at a young age when the sailors' dice would roll off and plummet into the water or a spilled bucket spoiled the playing cards. Henry ran up to him, one eyebrow straight in studious observation and the other arched in intrigue. He shook his head wearily.

"All you have to do, lad, is come up with a person or thing, no places, and then I do the same. You then present an argument as to why your choice could beat my choice if paired against one another. I counter it, and we proceed until one can no longer come up with any arguments."

"Verbal tennis," he said.

"Oh, so you have a variant of it?" Killian frowned for a split second. "Well then I suppose you'll be a superlative opponent. Ready? Ogres."

"Ninjas."

* * *

"Shouldn't we avoid making a fire?" Henry asked, setting down the backpack and pacing the perimeter of a small thicket.

"Rookie mistake, kid," Emma said. "Ogres are blind. They hunt by sound alone." With a short laugh, she added, "And, uh, guns don't really do much to them, so...yeah, those two things would have saved me from embarrassing myself in front of Mary Margaret." She sat next to him and dug around in the backpack. "That woman thinks of everything," she said, pulling out matches.

"So!" Henry heaved, setting his hands on his knees, which prompted a smile out of Killian, he had to admit. There was quite a bit about Henry that was adult, quite the achievement growing up with Regina. The excitement, the wonder at everything—obviously a boy, but it was the way he sequenced everything out, the way he was confident to steer the conversation now. "Do you have any places to recommend?"

Er...

"What?"

"For living. I saw the castle was damaged. We wouldn't be able to live in that for a long time. I read that it took like a hundred and sixty-eight years for the French to build Notre Dame, and you're a pirate, so I just figured you had been around and would know some good places to live." He paused to look over at Emma, whose nigh-cross-eyed face probably matched his own. "There aren't anymore magic beans. Not on this side, anyway. We're stuck here."

"I...Henry...I'll be back. I'm going to go get us some food. Watch him, please," she said in one breath, hurrying away from the firelight and into the forest. Stuck. More like trapped, he thought. However disengaging her world might be, it was what she knew. She didn't have to repeat her silly version of the events surrounding Jack the Giant Killer for him to remember.

"No, I suppose that would be for your family to decide," he settled on saying, giving himself a nod that he could be quite the diplomat when the occasion called for it. He ought to change the subject in spite of the fact the boy seemed much keener on the idea of staying than his mother.

"You should be glad we're staying anyway."

"And why is that?"

"If you went back to Storybrooke, wouldn't you just get taken to jail?"

Killian released a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding and laughed.

"I'd like to see anyone try to put me there," he said, giving the boy as much bravado as possible. He could study his face this way, the way he did with Bae so long ago, except this time, images of Milah were much, much hazier than before. Memories he'd retained, naturally, but other than a few specific images, a wrinkle in the forehead here and there...Henry reminded him of Bae but appearance-wise resembled his mother's side of the family, a good portion of his grandmother, his grandfather's mouth.

Henry seemed to like him, however, which managed to cheer him. Nodding, he pulled out his book and positioned it to where the fire would allow him to see it.

"So your book there..."

"It has our stories in it. It says what really happened." He turned it around and opened it up like a teacher about to read to a group of students. "It's how I knew what the curse actually was."

"Could I take a look?"

* * *

Swan returned, he noted from the corner of his eye, something small and meaty, rabbit by the look of it, getting ready to meet the fire. She stayed silent, and he didn't envy being in her position, just realizing her choice of lands to live in had been taken from her by sheer happenstance and that she'd heard said news in front of the man who had kissed her but was too much of an ass to know what to do about that other than hope he could kiss her again.

_"I still say we should kill him," the warrior woman, Mulan, had said by the campfire months ago. Killian rolled onto his side so his back faced them, feigning sleep, an old trick that worked more than he thought it should. "He's leading us right into a trap."_

_ "If he was willing to double-cross Cora, he'd be willing to do that with us," Snow White had said, although more to herself, as if she were calculating figures. _

_ "Yeah, but he's a way to this compass thing," the one who had held a knife to him, the one who had all but dangled his life right in front of him for what she wanted despite the simpering princess' doubts._

_ "If it's all a ruse-"_

_ "It's not. He was telling the truth. All he wants is his revenge. Guys like him give their loyalty to the highest bidder, which, according to him, is us."_

_ "And so best case scenario, he goes to your world with you and kills a man?" Aurora gasped. He rolled his eyes. _

_ "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Swan had said. "Rumpelstiltskin and his problems are pretty low on my priority list right now."_

_ Good taste, he mentally cheered her. _

_ "We kill him now, you're no worse off than where you are now," Mulan argued. _

_ "Jeez, can you just chill out, Mulan? Go beat up a tree if you have some issues to work out. We're not killing him."_

_ "Emma, honey..."_

_ "Am I the only one who wants to go home?" her tired voice started to yelp. He could feel eyes on him, as if she remembered he was "sleeping." Sure enough, she lowered her voice to a whisper. "The compass thing is true. He was telling the truth."_

_ "Now how do you know that? You really can tell when someone is lying?" Aurora asked._

_ "Yeah, guy's kind of an open book, and keep your voice down. He's trying to sleep."_

_ Emma Swan, how Cora underestimated you. She'd given him brief descriptions of the two women, explained who they were well enough, but had laughed that "the daughter" was brand new to their world, a fish out of water trying to catch its breath wherever it could. How wrong she'd been._

"Swan, is this supposed to be you?" He held up the page with the picture of Charming placing her in the wardrobe, swaddled in a thick white blanket.

"Yep, Step One towards breaking the curse," she snorted.

"If you go back one you'll see my grandpa fighting off guards to get her to the wardrobe," Henry added. Ruffling a swan's feathers had become something of a pastime, and it beat avoiding her. He'd...he swallowed, his blood running cold...and warm...he'd missed her.

"Striking, from the baby to the woman, I mean. Having no idea how much of a force to be reckoned with she'll become."

"Yeah, well, rabbit?"

* * *

Henry had volunteered to keep watch, entirely something Bae would have done. Cunning woman that she was, Swan had permitted him with the condition that he lay back for five minutes to "rest and gather his thoughts." He slept curled up over on the opposite end of the fire, leaving the two of them to have to speak to each other to set up watch shifts.

"You can go ahead and rest. I'm not tired," she said to the flames.

"Really? How can you not be?"

"Would _you_ have liked to have been stuck in Storybrooke for the rest of _your_ life?"

Absolutely not.

"I don't know, a new land, new devices, pleasurable company to be found, I'm sure." He shot her a grin.

"Yeah, I get it. You'd make do."

"Don't you think you'd make do here?"

"It's not..." she groaned, her fingers sliding up from her temples into her hair, leaving him wishing he could do the same to her. It truly was as if she could hear his thoughts at times because she pulled them back out and waved them around to help her explain some convoluted thought. "Staying here means not being the sheriff anymore."

"Are you really that married to your job?"

"It means having to be..." A face followed that made him discover what she'd look like tasting rotten meat. "A princess."

"Ah, I forget you are one sometimes," he said, a heat building. It was a cliché, too many songs about pirates somehow being involved with a princess, but this was more, gods help him, and the guilt of it being more, the guilt of forsaking his revenge in favor of a chance of not parting with her any time soon, terrified him less and less.

"I forget I'm one sometimes! That means having to learn how to be a queen, having so many people depend on you, doing the politics thing, heading off into wars, holding court...I, I wasn't even okay with just one person depending on me for a long time." She looked over at Henry. "He found me."

"What do you mean he found you?" Curiosity had told him very early on he wanted to know just how Swan had come about this lad and how he'd fallen into Regina's clutches and how the pair now somewhat shared him in a most awkward way.

"It was my twenty-eighth birthday and there was a knock on the door with a little kid basically waving and going, 'Hi, I'm your son that you put up for adoption and I'm from a town where everyone's a fairytale character but they don't remember that because my other mom cast a big curse and you're the only one who can break it.'" For once, she grinned back at him, flushed at the craziness of it. That was how he wanted her to look at him, just like that, happy, carefree, embracing all the craziness. "It took like a year for me to even believe him."

"And then to throw his father back into the mix must have been a delight," he tried.

_"Captain...sir?" the nurse, Linda, he checked her name tag again. "That ringing means you have a phone call."_

_ "How's that?" he asked, struggling to sit up in the hospital bed. She helped adjust the bed for him, picked up part of the contraption on the table next to him and held it against his ear. "Say hello."_

_ "Hello?" _

_ "Hook, there are problems."_

_ "Swan, how nice of you to check in on me, although this seems quite the lazy way of doing it. I see passers-by walking in the hallway all the time taking flowers to the invalids they're here to see..."_

_ "Listen, this is to give you a heads up. I'm leaving town and that does not give you a free pass to go do anything to Belle. You leave her alone and you'll stay in one piece. Got it?" Dread was only something he'd heard in her when she'd been on the other side of that cell._

_ "But if the sheriff leaves the town will erupt into chaos." He chose to give his sarcasm a monotone since laughing hurt so much._

_ "It's kind of a weird deal I have with Gold, uh, Rumpelstiltskin." He growled, but waited for her to finish. "I owe him a favor and without spilling out somebody else's business, I'm going somewhere with him and this is all with the threat that if you touch a hair on Belle's head, he will kill everyone I love. You will be watched and I don't care about the circumstances between the two of you." He was going to speak then, but she kept going. "Hook, you're...you've got another chance to live and I'd rather you take advantage of that then just keep digging your own grave."_

_ "Touching sentiment," he said and then sighed. "I swear to the gods of my world and yours no harm will befall Belle that is my doing. Now, in regards to this trip of yours, do not, I repeat, do not let the Crocodile seduce you. He can be the charmer you know, all scraggly and gimpy. I hear that really does it for some ladies out there."_

_ Her voice was gone and Linda had to gently take the phone from him and explain what it was to hang up on someone. _

"Neal, yeah," she said, her back straightening, and then she looked right at him. Gods, he hoped he hadn't jumped. He couldn't look away from her, whether he wanted to or not, and he could foresee no reason on earth why he would want to. She stood up, her breathing just a hint ragged.

"Don't go hunt anything else right now," he said, springing up, facing her.

In one swift motion, he'd curled his arm around her and, lifting her an inch or two off the ground, propped her against a tree trunk. With care, he switched arms so his hand could touch her face, and she was allowing it. He'd half expected to be slapped in the face and have a gun pulled on him, but no...gods, how soft, how bloody pliant and, and responsive she was. Her eyes—he'd planned to seduce her but to hell with that. He closed his eyes and savored her kiss again. He didn't feel old or broken or empty now...he hadn't any time he'd been with her... oh, her jawbone tasted as sweet as her lips. A soft gasp, her hands clasped at the back of his neck, her hips knocking into his—he'd been mad to think he was the one seducing her. A short, breathy sigh of his name sucked even more control from him, leaving nothing but a burning need to extract it from her over and over again.

Breaking away from her, Killian stared at her. So pale-featured, like spun glass save for the hardened soul beneath.

She was staring back, something going on behind her eyes he desperately wanted her to voice. It looked like...like she was not going to let him go. Her legs trembled, too. Say something, he prompted himself, scolding himself for feeling so tongue-tied.

"I wanted to kiss you ever since the beanstalk," he whispered, slipping back into a seduction mode and yet so close to her throat, the tip of his nose in her hair—his voice was less steady than he would have wanted. He leaned in again, so ready for that touch of bliss again, but she pulled back.

"I'm going to say a word and I want you to say the first thing that comes to mind," she said, her brow knitted and her lips pulled down again. He'd lose that one for sure, as the only thing in his mind right now was _Emma, Emma, Emma_...

"Milah," she said. His heart still raced, but he cooled just a little.

"Taken."

"A guy plans revenge for a few centuries and all of a sudden..." Her head made a circular motion, like she was leading him to an answer, but his head still spun. Stone still, he could hardly think, so dizzy.

"All of a sudden, he's this close to a beautiful woman who knows how to best him because she understands him," Killian whispered, shocked he could gather a coherent response. "May not approve of him, but understands." He pressed against her again. "It's a rare thing, and for my part, I quite like understanding you."

"It took you this long to be on the rebound?" she asked, her voice still husky, her eyes still not leaving his.

"Emma..." She lunged just a hair when he said her name. He'd scream it out a hundred times if it eventually brought her back. He ran his fingers through her hair, suddenly wondering if it would be the only time he ever could.

"Tell me you don't want me," he murmured, his forehead on hers. "Tell me to go." He gripped her hair, still tangled in his hand, but gently, trying hard to control something in him he couldn't name. "No, I don't want to forget Milah. I catch myself at times not thinking about her, thinking of having a life, thinking of you, of being happy and letting her go and then there's a damned tremendous lot of guilt. And then there are times when there's guilt about having no guilt at all." He couldn't hear himself anymore, wanting what this little dance or whatever it was to end and be replaced by something more, more substantial. Less teasing, but just as tantalizing. "I spend time with you, Emma, and I want to live. I think of you and I'm happy. Sometimes I don't want to be happy or want you but it doesn't make it go away."

How close, the proximity, that so little space was between them hurt. It was an ache Killian had never, in all his years, ever felt. He released her, letting his hand droop over to the trunk instead, mesmerized by the way her eyes had bulged, shimmered a little, like fireflies against the night, frightened but dancing.

"You didn't come along for me, did you?" she whispered in a quivering voice. "You came along for you."

"Yes." Backing away, the night air felt so cool, chilly even. He stood in one place and closed his eyes. That rather answered the question, didn't it? Guilt or no, he did want a life, one with purpose and reason. There. A massive weight he'd hauled on his back for longer than anyone should remember had been knocked off, reduced to crumbles so he would never have to carry it again. He almost laughed, almost wept, but Henry stirred, the fire crackled, and crickets chirped incessantly in the background. All this rescuing business was far from over.

"I'll take the first watch," he said, walking around the fire to the far end of their little camp. "You should try to rest."

And thank gods for a little stroke of luck, Killian thought, not hearing any arguing, just the sound of Emma nestling down on the ground next to her son, because now was decidedly not the time to share that he'd finally gotten it through his thick, stubborn head that he loved her with all his blackened pirate heart**.**

* * *

**A/N: The very first scene is an extension of a deleted scene which I was very happy to find existed, so about the first half of that scene was actually filmed. Coming up, Belle takes some desperate measures.  
**


	21. Twenty

Darkness shrouded Belle and the others. Whale, Dre...Leroy, the dwarves, and Granny assembled in the bushes behind the convent. Granny kept watch on the basement window with binoculars while Belle was still on the phone with Anton.

"Belle, I'm sorry. I looked and looked, but I could only find the one bean," he said.

"One bean is all we need. We'll be able to cut through the forest to the bean field. Archie should be rounding everyone up now." She'd read the files and knew the town's population, larger than most people would assume. A daunting task, she'd read harrowing accounts of prisoners in World War Two tunneling right underneath the barbed wire fences of the enemy. No time to dig, the forest would have to be what shielded them. Moonlight streamed through the branches and illuminated the outside, so maybe the cover of darkness wouldn't be quite so effective.

An ear-splitting howl jolted her, jolted her as much as the first time she'd heard it...chained in the library.

"Hey, Belle..." Whale cleared his throat.

"What? What's wrong?"

"I just think you should know something before we do all this."

Oh no, she thought. She knew Dr. Whale's reputation, how often he leered. Now was definitely not the time to hit on anyone, and here she'd been hoping that Ruby had uncovered a few layers to him...

"Ruby and I are dating."

"Oh! Oh, that's wonderful," she whispered. Then, a beat. "How long has that been going on?"

"Not too long." He flashed her a smile. "We just wanted to tell you and I don't think she has much ability to do that right now."

"I'm happy for you," she said, regretting she had to turn her attention to something much less optimistic. The three dwarves, Sneezy, Doc, and Dopey, weaved through the group, nodding at each other, then her, then at each other again.

"Are you ready?" she asked them.

"Glad to be back—_achoo!-_with the boys," was the answer. Sinking lower into the bushes, she watched them pull out bottles and take a few swigs. Pulling paper bags up around them to the neck of the bottles, they began staggering to the main door, shoving each other. Belle tiptoed up to the basement window, a brick in her hand. She fought off hyperventilating, hearing the dwarves but no longer able to see them. Gripping the smooth, hard brick, she listened.

"And I say James Polk was a better president!" Sneezy bellowed. Belle shook her head and stifled a laugh.

"You're crazy! Zachary Taylor was much better!" Peeking around the corner, she saw Dopey seemed to be siding with Doc, standing behind him with his arms folded and nodding his head with his tongue dangling out.

"James Polk!" Sneezy shoved Doc.

"Zachary Taylor!" Doc shoved Sneezy.

"Gentlemen! What on earth is going on?" a nun answered in a thick housecoat over flannel pajamas.

"Sister!" Sneezy squawked, his arms wide. "Settle an argument for us. Which president was better, James K. Polk, or Zachary No-one-knows-why-I'm-famous Taylor."

"You've both been drinking. I suggest both of you go home and sleep it off. Now walk home quietly so you don't disturb anyone else," she said.

"Hey, hey." Doc pushed himself past Sneezy. "You're letting this idiot make your decisions for you. Taylor, why, Dopey, tell her all the amazing things Taylor did when he was in office. Never mind. Don't answer that. You're out of your element. I'm telling you..." With a hiccup, he propped his elbow up on the doorway and poked his head into the convent. Here it comes, she thought, returning to the window and drawing back her arm with the brick in it. "I can argue this single-handedly, any time, any place. Just you ladies give me the date you want the lecture!"

She hurled the brick into the window at the same time Doc stumbled back and, taking Sneezy and Dopey with him, somersaulting down the steps, their bottles crashing everywhere.

"Oh my goodness!" the nun gasped, her feet dodging shards of broken glass.

"Now look what you did, you clumsy jackass, pardon my French," Sneezy said, hopping up and barging into the convent. "If you'll just point me in the right direction of a broom and a dustpan I can get that all cleaned up for you in a jiffy, as long as Lushy the Dwarf here sobers up and doesn't take another wipe-out."

Belle squeezed through the window and set a reluctant foot down on a shelving unit. Afraid the whole thing would break off the wall, she jumped down from it, risking a twisted ankle. There, wide-eyed and gagged, Nova sat tied up in a flimsy chair.

"It's all right. I'll have you out of there." She sidestepped to the back to undo each knot of the white clothesline.

"Thank you. We don't have much time. The Blue Fairy comes down sometimes at night, too," Nova said, breathless.

Belle took Nova's arm and positioned it over her shoulders and hoisted her a fraction to be able to guide her to the window.

"It's all right," she said again, not at all thrilled about climbing the shelving unit and wedging the two of them through that window. "Let me go at first and I'll be able to help pull you."

"Did you get her?" Leroy asked, immediately at the window, taking her hands and helping her through the window. "Nova!"

"Dreamy!"

Shuffling out of the way, Belle let him pull her through the window, both of them looking down at their hands when they touched. It had to have been decades, she thought. They stood stone-still out in the yard between the wall and the bushes, the space between them frozen in time.

"We have to go," she said, nudging Leroy's arm. Thank goodness they snapped out of it and hurried along behind her. Now it was time to run.

Once in the woods, it grew even darker, the ground shielded from moonlight by the tree canopy. Shadow overlapped shadow. Their speed slowed in spite of themselves, hands on the back of the person in front of them. Doc, Sneezy, and Dopey caught up to them, their heaving breaths the only trace of their presence in the dark. Flipping up the lid of her phone and holding it eye-level like a lantern, she redialed Anton and put him on speaker.

"Anton," she hissed into the phone, wishing she could cover her own mouth. "We're on our way. Do you have everyone?"

"Yes, the hospital's been evacuated and everyone's ready to go. You'll be here soon, right?"

"We're coming as fast as we can. Ruby's close by?"

"She's patrolling around here somewhere," he said with an anxious laugh. "I'm a little scared."

"Of her or of portals?" she asked.

"Uh, both?"

A ray of moonlight in front of her! This is it! Her mind shouted simply "we're here, we're here" again and again, leaving no room to even entertain thoughts of what she would do in the Enchanted Forest, how she could somehow use its natural magic to alert Rumple to their move.

"Let Belle go first!" she heard Anton directing the endless faces and outlines. Storybrooke really was bigger than anyone thought. "Join hands! It has to be a continuous dive or the portal will seal up. We're not leaving anyone behind so get ready! Belle, go!"

Not even remembering whose hand she held, she held her breath and sprinted for the direction of the bean, now a swirling green vortex. There was no way the nuns were oblivious to this. They would be on their way. Her feet no longer had to carry her. The wind, the suction, picked her up and sucked her into the void, flashes of green and yellow spinning all around her until she blacked out.

* * *

**A/N: Short chapter, I know, but this one and the chapter after it are happening concurrently.  
**


	22. Twenty-One

The land above the beanstalk, held up by fluffy, harmless-looking clouds, reminded Charming of how he'd felt when he'd been plucked from the farm and dropped into a world full of palaces and arranged marriages. It had dwarfed him then and it definitely, literally dwarfed him now. They hiked around the estate to the gardens in the back where the remains of the endless bean fields were now reduced to rows and rows of eroded soil. The boys held hands and formed a chain to avoid falling down into the trenches.

Emma and Henry had to stay in this land. It hit him like a slap in the face, a mixed kind of slap.

"Charming?"

"There aren't any beans on this end," he said to Snow.

"Then Emma and Henry..."

"I wanted them to be here. I don't think I could have gone without them," he said with a sheepish shrug. "But I'd wanted her to choose it. She's...she's not really into things she didn't plan on happening."

"You noticed that, too?" she gave out a silent laugh.

"She won't...is she going to want a throne and a crown and to do all of that? Don't get me wrong, I think she'd be great at it, but..." Had he taken her happiness as abruptly as Regina had taken all of theirs? He knew how it was to be in a world that, for all its benefits, was not a world you chose. To resent the kingdom, to resent them for being royalty—he had to stop his feet from shuffling down into the trenches and searching for beans instead of searching for Bae.

"We'll figure it out," she said. "Come on. Let's go along here." Rumpelstiltskin searched several paces in front of them, alone, but well within their line of sight. Regina took the children and Greg and veered off from the treasure room to some kind of parlor. "Where to?"

"They should have been looking for the beans, although I don't know how they would have climbed up here," he thought out loud. He and Snow had done this several times, bounced one idea off of another, no matter how basic or absurd in hopes they could build off of each other until they'd reached the right answer. "Say they get up here, never mind how..."

"They'd have gone to the field and then...I'd have said they would have tried the treasure room for something that would do the same thing. I don't know if we would know something like that if we saw it, or if we would notice something was missing, but we might as well try."

The treasure room glittered with towers of gold coins, jewels and odd trinkets—a bigger, shinier version of the pawn shop in Storybrooke, he thought with a smirk. It had no organization, no categorizing of what belonged where.

He began sorting through a bureau of some sort, coins flowing out of the drawers when opened like a waterfall. It all belonged to Anton of course, rightfully, and it helped renew his faith in things being able to turn out right that the big guy just wanted to farm and have friends.

"Hello? Hello?" he heard below him, below...

"Snow." She closed the lid to a treasure chest and hurried over to him. "Help me with this." Picking up a scepter, she cleared a tile on the floor and found a second one. He drew it back above his head and slammed it into the floor. Snow followed suit. He sent the scepter down again, then she did. At last through a tiny dust cloud they saw movement down where the floor had been.

"Snow?" he heard the voice again. Sinking down into crawling positions, they lowered their heads to the hole in the floor, their foreheads touching. A woman's face became clear, eyes almond-shaped and a lip-sealed smile.

"Mulan?"

* * *

_The boy fairy kept staring at him, having Slightly cup his cheeks and turn his head this way and that, analyzing, reading something in the pores and bones. Why, Bae didn't know, but then the fairy held out his tiny hand and placed it on top of his own. When he did that, the world began to blur in front of him, fading away into a blue-black abyss. Every muscle felt thousands of pounds. Fight it, fight it, he willed himself, his eyes struggling to focus. The fairy's little hand had seeped into his forearm, the fingers wiggling around under his skin like chiggers. Screaming, Bae flung his arm out in front of him, sending Peter Pan whirling into Slightly._

_ "Sir! Sir, are you all right?" Lips tightening and eyes narrowing, Slightly drew his arm back and backhanded him. He collapsed right onto his tailbone, hard enough to make him fear it was broken. _

_ "That'll do," Pan said. _

_ "We're s-sorry we keep failing, sir. It, it won't happen ag-again," Slightly stammered._

_ "Patience, Slightly. Good things come to those who wait. This one, he's close to the right one. Close. There is some connection. It can almost work."_

_ "If I'm not the one you want, let me go!" Bae bellowed, hustling to his feet to stand face-to-face with Pan and Slightly, his fists clenched to white-knuckle lengths. _

_ "Twin!" Slightly called. They both showed up, they always did. They could never tell the twins apart and as far as Bae knew, they had never even bothered to learn their names. They mirrored each other, arranging their cloaks and the vests and blouses to reflect the other one. "Take him back and put him with the others." To Bae, he jerked the boy by the chin. "You're here because Peter Pan requires you to be. You will defend the island fight for us should anyone come to upset our plans. And if you're insolent again, just remember you don't need all your fingers to be able to fight."_

_ The twins each took an arm and dragged Bae back into the depths of the cave with the other boys, thirty or so boys close to his age, mostly brunette, their faces tear-stained. They threw him down onto a gravelly section of the ground and dusted each other off in front of him. Bae swore to himself he would not spend another moment submitted to the scrutinizing eyes of Peter Pan and his flunkies. On his hands and knees like an animal, he moved an inch per minute, his fingertips on the cold, moist rock. Having been rounded up and dragged through the cave enough times, he knew where the darkness took over the mouth and no one would be able to see him._

_ Huddling behind a boulder, he watched the Lost Ones out in the field harass each other and take turns jumping into the air. _

_ "Can't do it, Tootles?" they teased. _

_ "No, only Peter can fly," Tootles sighed._

_ "Sure, you can fly," two of the Lost Ones said at the same time, the hoods of their cloaks moving closer together. Bae had sparred enough with other children in the village, wooden swords knocking against each other, to know when two were ganging up on another. Sure enough, Tootles snapped his eyes shut so tightly his head trembled and jumped into the air again. _

_ "That won't do! What's the matter with you?" they laughed. "All it takes is faith and trust and a little bit of fairy dust!"_

_ He watched them, watched the dark violet night pour more and more over everything until at last the Lost Ones ambled back to their treehouse and slid down into the trunk, knowing the children had cried themselves to sleep. Fairy dust. Lands with magic were nothing but trouble._

_ Dashing back to where the other boys were, Bae nudged the nearest three awake. _

_ "Hey! Hey, wake up!" They rubbed their eyes and mumbled curses. "I know how to get out of here, but we all have to work together." Scrambling around, they roused each boy from dreams full of hugs, warm dinners, and soft family pets. They lined up, one behind the other, and followed Bae, moving where he moved, stepping where he stepped. Crossing the field back into the forest would be the most harrowing of the escape. They belly-crawled, one at a time, so from a distance their silhouettes could be that of a snake. Bae was everywhere—leading them to where he wanted them to stop and wait for the others, crawling with the more frightened ones through the tall grass, returning to the ones at the tail end and encouraging them. _

_ Once again in the lead now that they'd spent hours worming themselves out of the cave, he tried to move soundlessly through the forest. He'd played hide-and-seek with Papa—with various people, he meant to think—in forests before, training your feet to step in ways so you didn't crunch the leaves or slip on dew. The cave had taught the younger boys to not be alarmed at spiders or roaches creeping around. He had no idea where Pan was. Don't think about Pan. Think about escape, he ordered himself. He held out his arm to motion to stop. The older boys held their position while he weaved through the trees to check on those in the back. A united front, good. Under different circumstances, a song might have livened them up, he thought. Something jaunty and fun that made work go faster. Like a sea shanty...only not. He shook his head. This land had nothing but disappointment in it._

_ A few yellow balls of light hovered over in the shrubs. Pulling two of the boys close to him, he gestured at them, fireflies from a distance, fairies to those who knew better. The fairies worked within the safety of the shrubs some nights, mixing paints together to ripen the berries the following morning. Around the shrubs, a shiny residue sparkled in the night._

_ "Fairy dust," he whispered to them. "We get some of that on us, think happy thoughts, and we'll be able to go."_

_ "Think of happy thoughts?" one boy scoffed._

_ "Any happy little thought," Bae repeated. They were from the Darlings' world. Magic was novel to them. But...Pan was a fairy. Surely these busybodies here served him and wouldsnitch on all of them. He didn't want to think about what the penalty would be for trying to escape. "Mark. Mark. You still have your pocketknife?"_

_ Mark, a year younger than Bae, had been procured by the Lost Ones a short time after they'd brought Bae to Neverland's main island. He'd flipped out the blade so fast Bae was sure it had been magic, but the Lost Ones had just laughed at him. _

_ "Yeah, I got it."_

_ "Cut me."_

_ "Bae!"_

_ "Cut me, I said!"_

_ "Why?"_

_ "A diversion." He pointed to the skin right above his eyebrow. Gulping, Mark nodded and, with expert technique, clipped Bae with the tip of the knife._

_ Inhaling, Bae ran out towards the shrubs, howling and squirming in every direction, watching the balls of light flock to him to investigate the commotion. The little tinkling sound of bells sounded like a language, but there was no time to try to discern any of it now._

_ "Help! Oh, help! It hurts! I'm bleeding!" he cried, feeling the wet, hot blood on the pads of his fingers. The fairies hovered around him, close enough to where he could see their addled faces. _

_ The rest of the boys unleashed a battle cry of grunts and shrieks, charging all at once to the shrubs. They pinched handfuls of fairy dust and sprinkled it over their heads, on the tips of their noses. A few rolled around in it. Others were on their hands and knees circling their palms in it, shouting out happy thoughts of "Mother!" "Father!" "Puppies!" "Fishing!"_

_ "Skating!"_

_ "Sledding!"_

_ "Parties!"_

_ "Christmas!"_

_ Each one shot off into the night sky, flying. Really flying. If their racket hadn't waked the Lost Ones yet, it would any second. Wiping the last drop of blood off his forehead, smearing red across his face, Bae dove into the fairy dust, just a little bit left for him. Last, he could hear footfalls in the forest. He heard swearing and groaning. He heard the fairies buzzing into the forest, their bell-like sounds faster and with more inflection than before. _

_ "Happy thoughts," he said to himself, but...no mother, no father. The hope of he and his friends averting combat against the ogres had long fallen by the wayside, overwhelmed by worry and anger at magic, at power, at addiction. Was there nothing to be happy about? Would his own self-pity seal his doom in this wretched place? Family, he thought. Companions. The Darlings. Wendy. John. Michael. _

_ Slowly, slowly, slowly his feet wavered above the ground, his body moving ever upward. As yearns for love grew stronger, he moved faster. Swimming through air, he kicked and found himself above the clouds, soaring and rollicking through a diamond sky. He had no idea how long he'd been gone or where he would land, but anywhere was better than here. Anywhere else could give him the chance at a family._

* * *

**A/N: I really wanted to come up with an Enchanted Forest plot to show what Neal was doing with Mulan, Aurora, and Philip this whole time, but while the Neverland plot and the Storybrooke plot seemed to be writing themselves, I couldn't come up with an EF plot to save my life. So I wrote this chapter...and remember, it's happening concurrently with the previous one...to sort of showcase Bae a little bit. I actually do like the character and want him to find a happy ending, and it was a lot easier to get to know him as a kid than as an adult.  
**


	23. Twenty-Two

Red-rimmed eyes and dirt specks in her hair—fantastic way to wake up, Emma thought, memories of her last "camp-out" in the Enchanted Forest leaving her hungrier and thirstier than she already was. Of course she hadn't slept, although God knows she tried. She'd listened to Henry's breathing, just leaned in close to her child's chest and tried to let his heartbeat lull her to sleep. How could Killian—no, how could...Mild Acquaintance Guy...say those things, do those things...make her feel this way...and expect her to sleep? She had so much to come to terms with, more than she even wanted to mentally list right now, and caring for him, falling for him—no, she corrected herself. No, no, no, because that's totally not what's going on.

This was all her fault. You repress so much and sooner or later it all comes out with much more intensity than you'd ever want it to. That's what this was, right? She'd been so focused on Henry that she had just ignored whatever little attraction had wormed its way under her skin. Uh huh, her gut responded.

_Tell me to go. _

It had sent a tremor down her spine. Her mind had thought out the response right down to the tone of each syllable, a "yeah sure, if only you didn't need someone to keep you out of trouble." But she'd chickened out. Some savior, Emma thought. Since when are just a couple of meaningless kisses probably forged out of adrenaline suddenly one of the most incredible, addictive, stirring-and-yet-familiar...

Just shut up now because you are asking for trouble.

And now what were they supposed to do? Just sit here and wait until the rest of them came down from the beanstalk? With Neal? So she could break up with him in spite of the fact they'd never gotten back together in the first place? So she could dust herself off and go be an honest-to-God ballgown princess?

"Mom? You want to split some jerky?"

"Sure." She sat up and bit into it. Hard. Yeah, jerky. Taste my wrath. "Where's Kil—Hook?"

"He said he was going to do some tracking and see what was around here real quick. Isn't this great?"

"Yeah, Henry. I'm sure ticks and potential dehydration are great." Get a grip, Emma, she told herself. Henry's safe. You're safe. You're all together. You have everything you wanted, and, maybe, everything you needed. Maybe. "Sorry. Rough night."

"That's okay. It's uncomfortable now, but I've thought about how we'll rebuild everything and there's really nothing stopping us from bringing some of the technology from our world to this one. We could pick and choose, you know? Bring just what we wanted to bring. I think a dump truck's too much to ask for, but with some planning, we could have antibiotics here. Ooh! And comic books."

Aw, that's why I love you, kid, she thought, beaming at him. Giving him a hug, she stretched and stood up, shaking out what she could of the dirt in her hair.

"Add shower technology to that wish list. I think we should actually start moving away from the beanstalk, just a little," she said. "I have a bad feeling about being right at the base of it."

"Henry, be a good lad and hold this compass for me. I have a chart somewhere..." Killian emerged, looking every bit as haggard and sleep-deprived as she was sure she did.

"I was just saying we should move away from the base of the beanstalk," she said, heart pounding at having to talk to him again. Hey, sentiment, she imagined her survival instincts were scolding, prioritize.

"Fully agree, Swan. You have a spider creeping up your shoulder," he said without looking at her.

Just as she brushed it off, she heard a deafening whoosh. The air seemed to spin around her until something body-slammed her right to the ground. What the hell...she spat out some dirt. Rolling back onto her back, she realized a woman had actually landed on her. A woman she knew.

"Belle?"

"Emma? Oh, Emma!" In her Belle way, she threw her arms around her, all but straddling her, nice for the heartstrings, bad for the ribs. "I'm so sorry."

"How are you here?"

A green hazy portal spat out more and more familiar faces, from old friends to people she'd passed on the street every day to complete strangers.

"Belle, is the whole town...?"

"We had to. I have to tell you all. You're in-" she trailed off when the corner of her eye found Killian glancing around at everyone crashing through the portal and hitting the ground. "Everything's all right, isn't it?"

"You're fine. What were you going to say?"

"Where's Rumpelstiltskin?"

"Belle, come on. You've evacuated all of Storybrooke. What's going on?"

"It's Mother Superior," Belle finally managed after a few breaths. "She knew about Henry's kidnapping. She had Nova tied up..."

"Nova?"

"Sister Astrid, tied up because she wouldn't go along with their plans. Emma." She gripped Emma's shoulders. "The Blue Fairy wants Henry. She knew all about who took him and why and I think she wants him for the same reason the first people did. I don't know why, but she was becoming dangerous."

"Henry," Emma said. "Henry, open up your book."

"To what?" he asked, paling. I know, kid. Just when we thought we were out of the woods. Just figuratively.

"To Aurora's story. You have that in there, right?" Emma had not exactly been a connoisseur of fantasy growing up, but she had been far from illiterate in the matter and remembered a story of princesses and spinning wheels, dragons and True Love's Kiss, and three fairies bestowing gifts. Sitting next to him, she skimmed the story and read of Maleficent's spite towards Aurora's mother and then transferring that onto Aurora herself. Sure enough, three fairies had blessed Aurora with the gifts of beauty, of song, and a much more spontaneous gift of a loophole to get out of a curse. Turning the page, she scoured the illustration of Aurora's cradle, all arched and medieval, with the symbol of a five-pointed star and a crescent moon on it.

"There, the symbol of the fairies," she said. "They're in trouble." With her hand bone-straight above her eyes, she looked up at the beanstalk.

"Trouble?" Belle asked. The townspeople looked this way and that, holding each other.

"Leroy? Ruby?" Emma called into the crowd. They came into view, both of them pulling her to them in a bear hug...wolf hug...and she couldn't help but smile for a split second. Having friends was still something to get used to. "Guys, I don't know exactly what's up there, but we need help. Leroy, you and the dwarves have to get all these people to safety. Do you know a place they can go?"

"Take them to the Dark Castle," Belle said. "The grounds have enchantments on them. They'll be safe there."

Leroy nodded to both of them and disappeared back into the crowd, rounding everyone up.

"Ruby, we'll need you. I've never seen you change, but there's a first time for everything..."

"Emma, I'm not sure I can change at will." Ruby looked down at the ground. "I'll do whatever you need me to do, but I don't know if I can just wolf-out whenever."

"Okay, fine. We'll just do what we can. We need to get up there. Do you..." Oh jeez, she thought. Killian was right there, had not left her side, and while that didn't necessarily shock her, the steadfastness of him, the seriousness...oh crap. She did love him, trouble be damned. He'd chosen her. He'd chosen to go with her into whatever deathtrap she could be leading all of them into, and she loved him, unable to pinpoint when that might have happened, but she loved him and her eyes couldn't help but soften just a little at him. Well, gotta tell him later, if you both live, she decided, nodding to herself. "Do you know where Cora got the clasp things? To climb it? We need to know if there are more."

"No. Why didn't you just hang onto yours?"

"Seriously?" It wasn't like they were on vacation and she'd left her sunglasses at the gas station. All she got in response was an eyebrow raise and a frustrated sigh. "After I came down I took it off. I thought, what was the point of keeping it. And the magic probably only worked once anyway."

"What kind of magic only works once?" he blurted.

"Okay, lesson learned. I, I can try to magic us up there, I guess."

"Take me with you!" Henry begged. "Please! I want to rescue my dad. I want to help!"

"No. You stay here and help the dwarves get everyone to safety. That's heroic. And it's important. I just have to..." She made a face. "Think happy thoughts, I guess."

"There's no 'I guess' about it!" Henry stomped his foot. "Mom, you're magic! You don't just have it. You are magic! And you have more magic than anyone in this land has ever had! If you keep doubting yourself, it won't work! You have to believe!"

The last time she didn't believe, she thought she'd lost him forever.

"Okay, Henry," she said. "I believe."

She closed her eyes and recalled Gold's words from the shop when she cast the barrier spell. Protecting family, securing well-being, love. So determined, so deep in her concentration she didn't feel Henry latch onto her at the last second. She visualized Rumpelstiltskin's desperation when instructing her in the pawn shop, imagining his voice so well it was like a trip back through time. _Conjuring magic is not an intellectual endeavor. It's emotion. You must ask yourself "why am I doing this?" "Who am I protecting?" Feel it. _

Feel it she did, then and now, not an overwhelming sensation of power as she'd first feared magic would be like. It was like looking into the depths of the souls of each and every person she loved.

Opening one eye first, Emma exhaled upon seeing the stone exterior of the giants' lair atop the beanstalk. Killian, Ruby, Belle, Whale, and...

"Henry!"

"I'm coming! If you didn't want me to come along, you shouldn't have said what you were going to do!"

"Fine. Let's go!"

* * *

Regina looked back to find Ian and Jacob tossing a few gold coins at each other like Frisbees. A quick "cut it out, guys" ended that and they resumed their search. She'd wondered at first why Owen hadn't quipped his usual brand of bigoted remarks in their direction, but then there was no proof of what land any of them had come from. No, all his sneers and shakes of the head were for her, how flattering.

He hadn't changed, and, no, she didn't mean the nose or the chin. He still acted like a little boy, exaggerating his skills, showing off his little toys like an electrocution machine...like a schoolboy playing secret agent. Henry had gone through a phase like that, learned the bare basics of the internet from her and suddenly saw himself as a hacker. Only boys overestimated their prowess, not actual men. When she'd waited for him in his room at Granny's and approached him, his eyes had narrowed, fearing she was actually going to come onto him, him! The one who would always be the kid who had been unpredictable enough to criticize her lasagna.

"Come along, Owen. The sooner we find Baelfire, the sooner this will all be over for you."

"By 'over' you mean like how it was all over for my father?"

"And what was I supposed to do with him?" She regretted it the moment she asked it. Still? Even with all these children around you looking up to you? She'd always believed evil wasn't born but made. Life had made her mother hard and bitter. Her abuse...because from a distance she could always see it and identify it as abuse...Daniel, her marriage to Leopold, Rumpelstiltskin, her reign—life had made her the Evil Queen. At least, that's what she had always thought, along with some insane notion that life could also turn her back into a sweet girl content with loved ones and a horse. She had made herself the Evil Queen, again and again and again.

"I should have let both of you leave," she said. "I should have cast a barrier spell after you were gone. No one would have believed either of you but you would have been together." Inhaling, she stepped towards him, Miles and some of the older boys stopping to watch. "I'm sorry. I've made quite the life for myself separating people from the ones they love. I can't make it up to you in any way." That's what had gone wrong, she realized. It hadn't been enough to just not use magic and to just not demote Henry and others to pawns. She hadn't atoned for any of it. And here comes the self-loathing you'd always pushed away with excuses, she thought.

"No, you can't, can you?" was the cold answer. No, Regina thought, but she could find Baelfire. She could fight alongside all these people once again. She could give all these children a home, one free of the pointless restrictions she'd placed on Henry. Her step a bit lighter, warmth spread throughout her insides. Funny that all it took to truly get a second chance was coming back here, to the land you thought you could never be happy in.


	24. Twenty-Three

**A/N: I thought I should go ahead and put out there that there are only two chapters left. Please let me know what you think after reading with a review! Special thanks to everyone who has left one, especially those who review every chapter. They mean a lot.**

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin lowered himself to the ground once he reached Snow and Charming and waved away more of the tiles until, standing right below them, Bae, Mulan, Aurora, and Philip could simply extend their arms for the others to pull them up.

"Bae."

"Hey..." he said, his eyes alternating between relief and horror at his face. "You, you're here. Tamara took Henry. Don't ask how I know that right now, but he's in trouble."

"He's here," Snow said, trying to gather him and Aurora to her. "He's fine. In fact, he was the one who told us you were here." She turned to Aurora, a good deal more well-rested and self-assured than when they were last together. "Thank you. Your heart?"

"Where it should be." She smiled.

"We should get you down to your son," Mulan said to Bae in her abrupt way, taking a few steps towards the door.

"Hold on. Regina! Greg!" Snow called, hearing their footfalls in response. He'd forgotten them, honestly, his eyes not leaving Bae. It would all be different this time, he promised, and a different kind of promise this time since he'd broken previous ones. This time his magic would only be used in pursuit of one more bean. They would find a way to bring Belle here. She would end this curse for him and then they could be a family. He could start making amends. Speaking of which...

"I'm sorry, son," he said, shuffling as close to him as allowed. "It's my fault you were sent here, that you've had to rebuild your life again and again in world after world." He paused, taking in the sincerity in Bae's face, an expression he'd seen every day when he'd been a boy.

"It's thanks to Rumpelstiltskin we were even able to leave Neverland," Snow just chimed in...unable to keep her mouth shut as always, he thought.

"So Tamara?"

"Dead. Hope the ring was insured." Just shut it already, he warned himself.

"And Henry's okay? Emma's okay?"

"Someone's coming," Charming said, unsheathing his sword. Regina tensed her arms, locking out her elbows and focusing on the doors, magic ready.

A hoard of people, Emma, Henry, Hook, Ruby, and Belle...sweet gods, Belle, raced towards them. Henry all but flew straight into Bae's arms and so he watched them share a tearful hug. He'd wanted it the way all parents wanted it for their children, to find love and have children of their own, but he'd also dreaded when he would have to share him with all those faceless specters of conjecture. Once it was actually happening, it didn't seem so bad. Belle followed a wave of his hair with her thumb and index finger.

"Sorry you had to see me like this," was all he could say.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before," she said with a little laugh. That was his girl. Perhaps now was as good a time as any to ask her for a kiss, a kiss to end the curse once and for all. It was easier to fight off the seduction of the power now, now that they were all in the same room. He opened his mouth...

A blast shook the entire treasure room, towers of coins jingling to the ground. Smoke filled the air, black and hot with a stench of sulfur accompanying it. Everyone tried not to move, to instead listen and squint through the smoke in search of an explanation. He smelled them first.

The smoke cleared to reveal the Blue Fairy, still a human nun in a drab but tight dress and sweater with her curls pinned into a bun. Row after row of fairies, or women who had once been fairies, stood behind her.

"Good. Everyone's where I want them. Almost." With a snap of her fingers, Henry vanished right out of Bae's arms. Magic beckoned him to the fairies where he reached his arm out for the boy a second too late. Amid all the voices of rising panic, he looked through a transparent wall at Henry struggling in the Blue Fairy's arms. With a roar, he hurled every spell he knew at the wall, the others' swords clanging, frantic digging with nothing but fingernails into the floor nothing but faint echoes to him.

"Thank you, ladies," the Blue Fairy addressed three fairies, dressed in pink, green, and blue. "You told Aurora the very place we needed them all to go."

"Flora! Fauna! Merryweather, how could you? I trusted you!" Aurora screeched, charging for the wall, but stopping.

"Sorry, Princess. You'll just have to watch him die like everyone else."

"Take me instead!" he heard Bae yell to her. "Come on!"

"You? Why would I want you?" she asked, her soothing voice without even a ripple.

"Because Peter Pan wanted me. I don't know why, but he tried to take me and he said it almost worked. I'm all grown up now. You don't need a kid. I'm stronger now than what I was." He opened his arms, tears welling.

"Oh, Baelfire." She shook her head, giving off something Rumpelstiltskin wanted to assume was pity. "You've always been so courageous. Your body does have a strength to it and you are leverage." She looked over at Rumpelstiltskin briefly. "But I'm afraid you're not the product of True Love. You just slept with it. Now, Rumpelstiltskin. You've lived far too long as the Dark One. It's time to end that. Go get your kiss from your True Love."

"I don't believe in fairies!" Emma blurted, her eyes bulged. He could hear her heartbeat, skipping beats and pulsating like mad.

"It's a good thing I'm not a fairy yet. Go! Or there's no reason to leave this body completely in one piece." She began to press her wand into Henry's throat.

Powerless. Impotent. No one liked those feelings, he knew, but every step away from Henry and towards Belle made him relive each failure, which seemed to be the running theme of his life—too little a name to become rich off his talents, an aborted attempt to be a war hero, a marriage crumbled, parenting at a standstill in the name of lustful power.

A heart in a box.

Failure after failure after failure of obtaining the right ingredients for the curse.

An empty heart and a chipped cup...

Then he was before Belle, tears streaming down her face, bottom lip quivering.

"I'm sorry," she managed to whisper through a stifled sob. "It wasn't a boy who was your undoing. It was me."

"No." He shook his head. "No, don't ever think that." This was for Henry, the Dark One's undoing—he bent his head down and kissed her, unable even now to resist savoring the taste of her lips. Warmth coursed through his veins, an inside-out cleansing ritual with all the black bile in his blood, in his heart, washed clean by the magic of True Love. Opening his eyes, he brought his hand up to eye-level, lips still touching hers, and saw flesh, true flesh, not gold flakes, no green leathery texture.

Gone.

"It's about time," the Blue Fairy said, her voice sending him spinning back to face her. No wonder she'd kept herself isolated so much after the curse was broken, busy little bee needed the most powerful spells of the realm to keep him at her mercy. Stroking Henry like a cat, she grinned, just about to slip her fingers down into his skin, when all of a sudden, Henry threw himself out of her arms and kicked her in the face, hovering six feet above the floor. Her concentration broken, the sound of shattering glass filled the room, cracks spreading through the invisible wall like the flames of a wildfire.

They charged. Swords above their heads, bows and arrows positioned, and, after a frozen moment of eyes glazing over, fangs sprouting, transforming into a wolf—they tore at the band of fairies, a few of them shrinking and reverting back to their fairy forms. There wasn't much he could do now, not by any means feeble, but one swipe at just the right place on his bad leg...

"Rumple!" Regina bellowed at him, wielding something similar to an umbrella for the flying hexes to ricochet off of. "Get the Lost Boys out of here and protect them."

"But-"

"I have to trust you." They've never trusted each other, not even the first night they met. Naïve, she'd been, stupidly optimistic, but always only half-trusting him, and that had been their best.

"You aren't going with them?"

"I, I have to help Snow and David," she said. "They've fought one too many times while I just stepped back and let them." He saw it, bravery. The choice to atone. He'd made it at the harbor, risking all he knew, his own life, for Henry. Snapping out of it, she barked at him. "Go!"

* * *

Snow wedged herself in between two tall wardrobes that loomed over her like giants themselves, near a trip wire. She was your friend, she thought, tears prickling. But there is no time to think of that. All that remains in a brain in a battle is prayer and strategy, survival instinct ever present. Plenty of nuns are still human, still able to run. They scouted her out, two of them close to her hiding place. Picking up a coin, she tossed it over the wire towards the middle of a cleared walkway. The two women heard it at the same time, heads snapping towards the same direction. The first one who had broken into a run tripped the wire, sending the cage slamming down on both of them. Thank goodness for muscle memory, she thought, her body knowing how to breathe and how to flex her arm and fingers to fire two arrows in quick succession.

* * *

Regina chanted silently, pulling vines off the beanstalk with magic and sending them into the halls like a virus. They tripped anyone in their path, springing up at the fairies and coiling around them from ankles to waist. The tips of their wings buzzed, but no flight, just a quick plummet to the floor. She considered stepping on them. She considered willing the vines to cinch tighter and tighter...

An awful way to die, she decided, at last sweeping her arms to the side. The vines in turn slammed right into the wall, the fairies falling out of the coils and thudding to the floor in lifeless slumps.

"I don't believe in fairies," she said, for good measure.

"Mom!"

"Henry! How are you doing that?" He flew straight over her, weightless and out of harm's way for the moment.

"There was a little bit of fairy dust left on the ship! Just a little. I thought it might come in handy, though!"

"Go with Mr. Gold and Belle, sweetheart. They're taking all the children out of here." Instead, Henry lifted a chest and carried it over to where he hovered right above a fairy. He let go, dropping it right on top of her.

She should not have stopped to watch him. A searing ache in her side prevented her from thinking much else. Turning, her wrist flicking in hopes of summoning a fireball, she gasped at how close Greg had come to her. Holding her wound with both hands, she spotted blood between her fingers before he pushed her to the ground.

"Thought you'd never have to answer for anything, didn't you?" he sneered, following her to the ground and straddling her. His knee knocked into where she'd been stabbed. A whimper left her mouth. Damn him.

"Owen, Owen, please. We're all on the same side right now," she sputtered.

"Oh, are we? I don't think I ever decided that." Looking over to the side, he motioned with his head for her to follow his gaze. David was the closest, sending each of his opponents to the floor with only two of three swift maneuvers with his sword. Magnificent, Regina thought. Smiling, a forehead-first, looking-up-beneath-the-eyebrows smile, he adjusted his knife until he had it by the blade, ready to fling it in his direction.

"David, look out!" she cried. It happened too fast for her to see, David looking and dodging just before the knife hit him. Cursing, Greg spat at her and reached for the nearest thing he could, a crown. With a grin, he drew his arm back with it.

"It's fit for a queen," he said, slamming it down onto her head.

* * *

Emma lunged for the Blue Fairy with a sword, the harsh glint of steel all around her. More and more nuns reverted back into fairies, but not her, nor the ones right by her. Good, then they can take a punch, she thought. With one rushing at her, she twisted and walloped her right to the ground. Ruby was near, but Emma couldn't bring herself to look at her for longer than just seeing a flash of brown pounce and tear into another flash of pink. Mulan and Neal were further out, locked back-to-back against more of them. For a split second, she let it sink in—they could all die. Her parents could already be dead. Henry, Killian...

The Blue Fairy nicked her with a sword, finally forced into movement. Clutching her thigh and hobbling backward, she brought the sword back up to her again. Heavy, clunky things, she thought. First order of business when this is all over, tell Mom and Dad to look into gunpowder.

Not taking the time for a snarky comment here and there, the Blue Fairy snarled at her, wings beginning to tear out of the back of her sweater. Live long enough for her to change back. Live long enough for her to change back, damn it! Street-gained fist and footwork seemed no match for experience, Emma stumbling back again, this time a nick on her torso. Seriously? Just a minute longer. If she could just go ahead and become a fairy again...

"The Most Powerful Magic of All," the Blue Fairy sneered, shreds of the back of her sweater falling to the floor. If she could fly, it was all over. "Not for much longer."

Half crab-walking, half sliding out of her reach, Emma's ears prickled at the sound of the woman screeching in pain, her chin sky-high. Killian held his sword out, flimsy white strands at the tip of it, like pieces of silk until Emma could see they were the wings. Scrambling to her feet, she nodded to him and he nodded back. She found herself letting him take her by the arm and swing her right into the Blue Fairy, knocking her to the ground...and was she a few inches shorter than she'd been before?

"Thanks."

"Finish her off," he said, but then he sank to his knees, howling, cringing until a tear gushed out of his eye. She almost dropped her sword, bending and patting him over in search of a wound. Smoke rose from his legs, the combination of scorched flesh and its relentless sizzling forced her to swallow back down her own vomit. Only the laugh of the Blue Fairy could have turned her away.

"Stop it! You'll kill him!"

"That was the idea..."

"Stop, please! He cut your wings. What good is any of this? You were their friend!"

"I was never their friend!" she snapped. "How was I...or Peter Pan...going to get the body we wanted if you were just a cursed baby your entire life? You had to go through that wardrobe! How was Tamara supposed to take him to Neverland if August had been able to tell you who attacked him? This way there is no more powerful magic in the land than the magic of the fairies...except yours." Blue light glowed, blazing to the point Emma needed to shield her eyes. Just a fraction from being closed all the way, her left eye could make out a billowed blue and pink shape, with tentacle-like things hanging from it, like a jellyfish. "I'll make you watch!" she shrieked, the blue light nearing her. "I'll rip out that magical little heart of yours and make you watch me trample it!" Growing smaller, a blue aura, arms floating around out of habit...

Now.

"I don't believe in fairies!" she screamed, her voice instantly hoarse. Running back to where Killian lay, his flesh still burning, she saw Henry land and go over to him.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Get down!" he shouted to him, pulling him down and covering him with his body. Just like with Peter Pan, bursts of light and dust exploded everywhere, leaving everything within a ten-foot radius glittering with fairy dust. There was no time to shake it off her eyelashes or the tip of her nose. She stuck out her hands and rolled Killian onto his back, cringing that he was now up to his waist in pain. Knowing what to do, still reeling that it actually was the thing to do, she tilted her head and kissed him.

He exhaled, sitting up and patting his own leg, checking, eyes not leaving hers. Moved, loving, awed—she couldn't describe his face, and didn't want to when he pulled her closer with his hook and snaked his arm around her, holding. Just holding.

"You are bloody brilliant."


	25. Twenty-Four

Charming had ducked, had covered the back of his neck with his hands like a tornado drill when debris...sparkling debris...had dropped out of nowhere, a true blitzkrieg of...what the hell? Waving his fingertips over the dust on the floor next to him, his eyebrows narrowed. Fairy dust. Scrambling to his feet, he scanned the entire room. Snow. Emma. Henry. Snow. Emma. Henry. Snow?

"Snow!"

She sidestepped out between two wardrobes, shaking the dust out of her hair. Dead fairies lay in a heap adjacent to her. They ran to each other, a kiss out of relief cut short. Holding hands, they sifted through the enormous room.

"Snow, I, Regina saved my life," he said, stooping to pick up the knife Greg had thrown at him.

"What?"

"If she hadn't yelled to me when she did, this would have hit me." She picked up the hand that held the knife and kissed it, bringing it up to her cheek. Snow just smiled.

"It's a little different when she's saved your life, isn't it? Then is she..."

"I don't know. I couldn't see what happened." He led her back to where he had been fighting, too drained to be angry. Blue had been their friend, one of their most trusted friends and yet he was too tired, too grateful to be alive to build up his anger. He concentrated on his search, stopping once he saw legs, the rest obscured by treasure.

"There."

"Oh no. Regina," Snow gasped, sprinting for her.

Charming squatted and went to her head, lifting it up to find a lump that belonged in a cartoon it was so big; it had taken over almost the entire side of her head.

"Regina?" Snow asked the cuff of the woman's sleeve, her pale fingers tentatively brushing Regina's olive ones. A small groan answered them. Breathing a sigh, he looked over a few feet. Greg laid dead, his throat slashed.

"Was that you?" he asked Regina.

"He thought he'd killed me," she whispered, a faint smile forming. "Magic works even when you're seeing double." Her eyes started rolling back.

"Sit up. Dr. Whale's with all the others. He'll help you. I think she has a concussion," he said to Snow in spite of knowing that was pretty obvious. They hoisted her to her feet and resumed looking, looking for anyone not a dead fairy. If Emma...no, he told himself. She can take care of herself. The rest of him didn't believe it, however, his feet moving faster, his eyes scanning to and fro with more intensity, his heartbeat escalating. Finally, the back of her head, pale blonde strands, came into view.

"Emma!"

"Dad," she said, and his heart soared. It didn't matter Hook had her in some life-or-death hold or that at least a dozen corpses demanded he weave in and out to reach her. He knelt and wrapped his arms around her, Snow quickly catching up to them and doing the same.

"She was amazing. You should have seen her," Henry said, his gaze taking on some concern when he spotted Regina. He pulled Henry to him too, feeling guilty the boy's words were starting to run together in his mind, a quiet thanking of the gods drowning out all else. Here they were, together, and home. "...that's when the Blue Fairy exploded! I am not making this up, and then all she had to do was kiss Hook and he's not burned anymore."

Charming's eyes flew open, his grip on Emma loosening. His eyes tugged at hers until she offered up a smile, not sheepish in any way either. Well, that was a sign that, great, he thought. Hook's not spouting off some smart-ass remark and Henry doesn't exactly exaggerate, even when people assume at first that he is. True Love's Kiss had done its work. Throttle him, the most fundamental edge of his brain ordered, but he quelled it. Instead, he extended his hand out to him.

"Curses, huh?" was all he could think of to say. With a laugh that sounded downright jolly, Hook took it and completed the handshake.

"No, not a fan," he answered.

* * *

He'd hated asking Emma to bring all of them down from the beanstalk, but with Regina and Rumpelstiltskin both...incapacitated...in different ways...that only left her. At the base of the beanstalk—people as far as the eye could see, hugging each other, hands over mouth in awe at their surroundings. Whale rushed to them, taking Regina's arm and pulling her off of him. Charming let out a moan at what a burden she'd been on his neck and back. He was positive everyone ached everywhere...

"Snow, you okay?" he asked, cocking his head in Whale's direction.

"I'm fine. Nothing a little bit of ice and then a hot bath can't fix anyway." Her eyes didn't leave Regina. Tapping her, he took hold of her hand and led her through the throng of people, their people. She seemed to snap back into herself, checking over everyone she passed, offering supportive words. Unfortunately, he knew, the leaders took ice and baths last. He spotted Rumpelstiltskin and Belle with the Lost Boys, the former gripping his arm with whitened knuckles. He rushed back to where Whale was looking over Regina.

"Whale, how's she doing?"

"She'll mend fine. Got a scratch or two yourself?" he asked with some reluctance...probably remembering a pretty ill-tempered punch.

"No, can you, can you look at Gold over here? He looks pretty beat up over there." Heaving a sigh, Charming slumped to the ground and brought his knees up, his arm bridging the distance between them and his head. Of all of it, returning home, his daughter in love...with a pirate, of all the choices, his worst enemies he hadn't even been aware were his worst enemies defeated—it was the stunning revelation that after all that had happened, in several worlds, he and Rumpelstiltskin were actually, he gulped, friends. Someone else who could go for a good stiff drink here soon, he thought.

"Well, well, well, broken arm?" Whale asked, arms folded, his head back in satisfaction.

"Yes, and if you wouldn't mind..."

"Oh, you want me to fix your arm?" He sauntered over to him, stroking his own left arm in an elaborate way. "First tell me why."

"Come now, Victor, you're that petty? A broken arm is one thing. I reattached yours for you."

"Say it. You made me say it."

Huffing, Rumpelstiltskin rolled his eyes. "I need science." In an instant, Whale's spirits lightened. His arms loosened, his face much more congenial. Had to be some inside joke, Charming decided, watching Whale bend down and take a look, Ruby and Belle looking on, both rolling their eyes. Where, now where did Emma get off to? He scanned around, finding Hook, but with Henry, off to the side by themselves, turned towards each other but not speaking, and, damn it, he trusted the pirate with his grandson. So...there she was. Over by a row of trees, she stood with Neal across from her, also turned towards each other but not speaking, not yet anyway, or loud enough for him to overhear. So, in spite of his legs throbbing, begging him to stay seated, he stood back up.

"Don't you take another step." He turned to find Snow glaring at him. "This is for Emma to work out. She's an adult."

"I know."

"We need to treat her as one."

"Snow, every mother is allowed one peek at her daughter's diary, just like every father is allowed one eavesdropping session with his daughter and a guy she was involved with." Her face softened as her eyes drifted over to where they were. She gave him a resigned nod and headed back to the others, to express gratitude and tend to injury and encourage. Rebuilding the kingdom would be next, and who could rebuild a kingdom with all this drama unfinished?

"Emma, hey, I...I know what I said at the portal, and I don't want to lead you on," Neal said, holding her hand, exposing a thick cut on his forearm from the fight. "I do love you, but it's, it's not the True Love you deserve, and, from what I was able to see...you, you feel the same way?"

"Yeah," she sighed, a crooked smile at their hands. "I mean, I can't help but think if things had been the other way around if I'd have done the same. I was so ready to hate you if I ever saw you again." Her voice sounded drained, hoarse, even. Thousands of images flooded Charming's mind, mostly involving a little blonde girl with unruly blonde hair running around a castle, sitting on her parents' bed with her feet dangling watching him put on his riding gloves, insisting she was old enough to try sparring with a real sword instead of a wooden one.

"I just couldn't," she whispered.

"It's okay, Emma," he heard Neal say. "We'd both made the choice to move on way before any of this happened."

"I'm just glad you're okay." There was a pause and a drawn-out nod from her head, like she was desperate to lighten up the conversation. "I mean, traveling around here with Aurora and Mulan can get kind of tedious. I don't even think Mulan smiled one time."

"Really? She smiles all the time now, laughs at me here and there, too." Neal laughed to himself and shrugged. "Thank you. Thank you for saving Henry."

It pained him to admit that he hadn't really known Emma long, but he did know her well enough to know what that scrunched-up mouth and coy eyes meant—that desperation to control her tears and her voice while trying to make light of the situation. She'd throw in a "whatever" in there somewhere.

"Whatever," she murmured, giving him a kiss on the cheek. Charming sighed. Finally ready to see to the people, he turned away from the private moment, only to hear a shy, hesitant voice.

"Bae? We haven't officially met. I'm Belle."

Charming turned back around to catch a crooked grin and approving, moved eyes on Neal's face.

"Hi, Belle. I've heard a lot of wonderful things about you."

* * *

It was a bit like the survivors' hold, Killian thought, taking in the first finished street of the village. He'd posed as a blacksmith there, knew enough to be passable, just not the one people preferred to commission, one-handed and all. Next to him, Emma sported tightened lips and a furrowed brow, nothing new there, he thought, struggling to imagine what it all had to feel like for her.

"You don't want me to go in with you?" he asked after they'd crossed a small bridge over a creek to a secluded cottage. Not a straight line in the whole place. To the domestic, the crimson and gold foliage everywhere might have cushioned its rustic look into something more cozy.

"Like you want to," she scoffed.

"Like you're beyond protection now?" he scoffed back, realizing they were already right at the front door.

"He's got zero magic and I'm a member of the family," she said, her eyes widening at just how casually that fact came out of her mouth now. The next few seconds spanned eons, Killian wondering if her business here could wait and they should talk...not that anything really needed clarification as True Love's Kiss tends to wipe away any and all doubts, but it felt as though something was badly in need of being sorted out. It would have to wait, he decided, noticing her knuckles about to knock. Leaning forward, he took a handful of her hair and sifted it between his fingers.

"I'll be right out here." She said nothing, but had bent her head down so that her cheek had touched his hand.

* * *

Emma couldn't bring herself to barge into the little cottage Rumpelstiltskin and Belle had chosen for their own, improvements and expansions scheduled after the reconstruction of the infrastructure...all of which made her head spin. She'd done a little bit of Habitat for Humanity, both voluntary and as a sentence passed by juvenile court judges, but that was child's play compared to what lay ahead. She pushed the door soundlessly, taken aback at the simple, rustic, even, rugs and shelves. A pile of straw rested in a corner next to the spinning wheel.

"Anybody home?" she called in.

"Ah, Emma. To what do I owe the intrusion?" Well, someone wasn't all that much different after having all his power taken from him, she was tempted to comment. He'd been working, the knees of his pants and parts of his cane lined with dirt. "You'll have to excuse the mess. We're finishing up this cottage, helping Bae with his..."

"What's the price?"

"Price? Oh, about a hundred and fifty," he said, picking up his cane and twirling it a little for her benefit. "It's an antique."

"The price of magic," she snapped. "All magic comes with a price. You've said it enough times. I've used magic. I've used magic a lot. When's everything I have going to start falling apart?" Was, was he scoffing at her? He was actually amused. Okay, she thought, got to drop the anvil. "I've worked for all this, Gold, and I've got to get my bearings in a whole new world and, and I don't want to turn out like you." He should strike her down with that cane after that, she thought, closing her eyes. No magic required for an ass beating.

"Do you know why you won't?"

"What?"

"The first time I used magic, it was the most addictive thing I'd ever experienced. When Regina first used it, it was the same for her. We couldn't stop, the power, after being so powerless all our lives. How do you feel after you use magic?"

"Warm," she said, hoping he wouldn't infer something weird like "tingly" or "fuzzy" in there. "Uh, content."

"No more intense than maybe taking a bite of ice cream? Surely not on the levels of something more, not like fantastic sex or, probably more appropriate for you, arresting someone?" he snickered a little at his own jab. Ignoring that, she shook her head. "You see, your resistance to it is something in your favor. That, and you've already started to see the price you're paying."

"Is that the beginning of some insult?"

"Think about it—you'd been alone almost your whole life. You had no one and no one had you. And then, one at a time, you began collecting loved ones. Henry, your mother, your father, him..." He shook his head, giving her a disapproving look. "Not to mention friends. Your price is the price anyone with a responsibility has, what anyone in a position to change what the stars laid out for them has—dependence. You aren't a free woman anymore, Emma. At least not in the sense you were before. You have obligations, and even I know how you've handled people depending on you in the past."

_We're leaving Storybrooke. _Yeah, forsaking an entire population because she didn't want to believe and kidnapping...sounded about right.

"But I'm different now. I've changed," she said.

"It's still your cross to bear," Rumpelstiltskin said. "Just as I learn to live without magic, even though I know it's better for me and the people around me. But I wouldn't worry, Miss Swan. This land doesn't stay quiet for long. I'm sure somehow the responsibilities you didn't initially want will just become adventures for you."

They'd had their differences, and since the beginning, Emma thought. And yet...they had worked together so many times. She'd gone to him when no one else even knew what was going on. He'd become a member of her family overnight. Quitting magic cold turkey, forced on by someone else—she didn't envy him. Stop just standing there nodding, she told herself, realizing she'd taken on a deer in the headlights expression. Approaching him, she inhaled, sucking it up, and hugged him.

"Thank you for everything," she whispered, feeling his hand shaking, not yet touching her back. At last it made contact and he returned the embrace.

* * *

**A/N: Last chapter is on its way, guys! The rather snarky exchange between Rumple and Whale in this chapter is a reversal of some of their banter in "The Doctor" where Whale had to all but beg Gold to reattach his arm. Karma... Anyway, I kind of missed a lot of the pseudo-mentoring scenes Rumple and Emma had this season and so felt it necessary to put one in. **


	26. Twenty-Five

**A/N: Hi, readers! This is it and just wanted to thank everyone again who read this and especially to those who reviewed. Feedback is everything. Originally there was also going to be an epilogue but it felt too contrived and there were some structuring problems so, to sum that up, everyone is fine and sees plenty of everyone else and there are many adventures to be had. The show's creators, writers, cast, and everyone else involved with it has done too good a job to deserve any less. Not too much longer before the premiere!**

* * *

"You think there's a height requirement for jousting?" Henry asked, sitting on the edge of his bed in one of the castle's guestrooms. A few of the lower floors remained intact, so really just half a maze to navigate through for starters, Emma thought, kneeling down to tie his tie for him. She'd chosen a simple white dress, no lace, no frills, and asked around until she could get it taken in enough to resemble something she would have worn in Boston for a sting—ankle-length this time, though. It _was _a coronation, after all. The skirt flowed more than the slinky numbers she'd rent for catching perverted embezzlers and con artists, a long sun dress.

"Mom?"

"Sorry, kid. Head's just spinning, that's all. Front row seat at a coronation and all."

"They've waited a long time for it," he said.

"Oh, Henry, I know! It's just..." Screw explaining. She wrapped him up in a tight hug. Was there really no breaking point for this kid? "You're kind of a trooper, you know that?"

"Hey, can we come in for a second?"

At first glance, the first instinct Emma had was to change clothes, taking in her mother's white gown, something like a wedding gown, all gold trimmed with some tulle. She cast her eyes down at the floor, the corner of one keeping focus on her father, decked out in some grayish blue doublet thing...and they were both beaming right at her.

"Sorry, I've just never seen you in a dress before," Mary Margaret...no, Mom. She's shed all that Mary Margaret stuff now. With a hesitant step forward, she felt her hands give her hair the slightest touch. "I did always like your hair curled."

"Oh, well, you guys are the ones everybody's going to be paying attention to."

"Henry, can we talk to Emma a second? Privately? Your dad's downstairs," her father said. Oh jeez. The apartment and Storybrooke's never-ending dilemmas never allowed the adults the luxury of discussion without Henry a stone's throw away, leaving Emma to wonder what kind of talk this would become. Surely, not _the _talk. Wasn't Henry proof it was a little late for that?

"There hasn't been much of a chance for us to hear how you feel about all this," Dav—Dad said, taking a seat next to her on Henry's bed. Mom wrung her hands. Okay, so a teeny-tiny bit of Snow White was still Mary Margaret.

"I'm proud of both of you," she said. "And I'm grateful. I couldn't have gone after Henry alone. I couldn't have processed any of this without you guys being around."

They smiled at her, shifting a little, their jaws clenching and un-clenching at how to get to the meat of whatever subject they wanted to bring up.

"Emma, we were wondering how you feel about being royalty," Mom said. Before her bottom lip could fall to the appropriate level, her mother dropped down to her level and took her hand. "We realize that you haven't had any time to let all this soak in, and while we think you'd be an amazing ruler..." she trailed off and looked to Dad for assurance. "We're kind of in a special situation with you being the same age as us."

"Sort of defeats the purpose of having an heir to the throne," her father added.

"Wait, if you guys think I'm going to try to get out of a responsibility..."

"It's not that," Mom said. "We want you to know that there is absolutely no pressure to become a princess like how you're thinking. In fact, we were wondering if we could offer up an alternative."

"Alternative? Short of starting some kind of democracy thing, I think I'm a princess either way."

"We want to know how you would feel about making Henry the official heir," Dad said.

"He's young enough that we could help him prepare for that kind of responsibility. You would have been preparing for it little by little your entire life had things been different. Now, of course if something happened to us before Henry came of age, you would have to be the queen regent, but...that's getting into the weeds. What do you think?"

"I think..." There was just no way to voice anything to those hazel eyes that matched hers and Henry's so perfectly.

"Given your background, we think there may be a better way for you to serve the kingdom," Dad continued. "Your background is law enforcement, finding people," he said with a grin. "Now while a captain of the guard's job is to be in charge of protecting the castle and everyone in it, they're not really trained to do investigative work. They can ensure the safety of the realm in a war or something overt, but there are other kinds of threats out there."

"So I would go from being the princess to being, what, the director of homeland security?" That shouldn't sound so insanely cool, she thought.

"It's up to you, Emma." Her mother finally sat on the bed with them, sandwiching Emma in the middle. "We're your parents and we think you would be a great success at whatever you choose to do, but if the idea of becoming a queen just isn't for you, then we would be more than happy to trust you to protect this kingdom the same way you protected Storybrooke."

"And I wouldn't be throwing Henry under the bus?" she asked.

"I think Henry's adjusting to this world a little too well to consider prince-hood being thrown under the bus," Dad laughed, giving her hair a stroke.

"I get paid, right? Benefits? Sick days?"

Laughing, her parents kissed each of her temples before they went downstairs.

* * *

She'd cursed their last triumphant day. She'd barged in uninvited, voicing nothing but disdain and unbridled hatred on their wedding day, a wedding day she was supposed to have with Daniel, in a castle or in a stable, she didn't care. It's all she had wanted, to start a family with enough land to raise horses, to teach sons and daughters how to ride.

She'd cursed them, cursed their friends, cursed even mild acquaintances and people who didn't even know them but had incurred her wrath nonetheless. She'd forced them to make the choice to send their child into a strange land, only going on faith that she would find them and rescue them.

She'd cursed herself, so intent on creating a place where she would always win that she had forgotten what it felt like to earn achievement, earn trust, earn love. She told lies, kept secrets, used whoever she could to keep up the closest thing she'd had to happiness. Then, for five years, she felt that she really did have everything. Her baby was real. His cries in the middle of the night, the stains on her designer suits, the battle of wills at home, at the grocery store, at the playground—it was real, and as long as he was a baby and the world was just the two of them, she had everything. And then, of course, she'd had to lie, keep secrets, and use people again.

Snow and Charming knelt at what looked like an altar, Jiminy the one chosen to officiate the ceremony. Crowns, pageantry, tradition—they understood everything that went behind those things, and she had just used them. The Evil Queen.

"Regina?"

"Yes, Miles?" she whispered back. She and the Lost Boys took up an entire row, the second from the front, an honored place.

"What's going to happen to us now? I need to tell the others something."

"I'm glad you asked that." They'd been gestured to to sit back down, a speech allowing her to hold her own hushed conversation with him. "There was a convent in the land I came from, Storybrooke, where lots of women lived together and did good works. They were fairies, so they're not around anymore, but there is such a place in this kingdom. If you'd like, and I do want it to be your choice, I can move into that place and arrange it so we can live there together, all of you and any other children that happen to be alone."

"Really?" He finally looked like a child, a toothy smile with bright eyes.

"I have the king and queen's permission as well as their blessing." Just flirt with honesty, Regina, she told herself. Just touch it and it will come easier and easier. "You see, I once kept their child away from them, and she grew up alone. I have to make sure that doesn't happen to anyone else. What do you think?"

"I think we'd love to," he said.

She smiled at him and caught Henry looking at her from the front row, smiling. She leaned forward and gave him a kiss before her attention returned to the coronation. She had Henry's love.

She had taken. Now she would give.

* * *

"So this is what you look like all dressed up."

Killian had looked stiff and acted like a statue for most of the ceremony, a deep red coat the only real change to what he wore, and, she'd found it cute and simultaneously pitiful he'd had to make an effort to be on his best behavior. She'd wandered out onto the balcony during the reception, fresh air and singularity the only cures for a party. Oh, she'd done her share of parties, but she'd always had to sneak off and take in some air, to be on her own for just a few minutes.

Funny how it was the first time that someone interrupting that was a welcomed change.

"Yeah, well, don't get used to it. Coronations don't happen every day." Smoothing the skirt, she approached him, opening her mouth to begin, but, screw it. Holding the back of his neck, she kissed him, trying to direct the assurances and even vows she'd thought up into the action, her heart and head reeling that she could feel his eyelashes brush his cheeks when he closed his eyes, could feel his hand snake around her waist and pull her close. I am not done with you, she willed him to hear. I am far from done with you. It ended and for a moment, she just stared into him, into those eyes that didn't have so much chill in them now.

"Was that to put your royalty fears at bay?" he asked her forehead, avoiding her eyes, probably avoiding some noble, "it's not you; it's my responsibilities" rejection.

"Actually, I'm offering you a job." Eyebrow up in the air, instant confusion—a giggle almost escaped.

"And what kind of job might that be?"

"Well, as my mother pointed out to me, there's not much point in having an heir that's the same age as they are, and since my area of expertise is, you know, thwarting evildoers and finding people..." In her head, she hadn't sounded so vapid. "This world needs some law and order, don't you think? I'm sure stretches of it are a no man's land."

"Sheriff of the world then?" Something close to a laugh broke out in him, an optimistic swallow following. "And so how would Sheriff Swan and her boy plan on traversing this land in pursuit of all these...villains?" His arm was scaling its way up her back, squeezing her upper body closer to him. There wouldn't have been any point in even entertaining going separate ways; he'd have seduced her too thoroughly to have followed through with that.

"See, that's where you come in. A ship would come in handy, and then so would someone who has a very specific kind of experience..." He switched arms to where the hooked one held her so his hand could caress the side of her face, looking so, so happy the rest of the world could have just faded away. A chaste peck of a kiss answered her.

Neither of them said anything, still working up to it. She had always thought that with the way these people viewed love that unsure moments just wouldn't be a thing. For the most powerful magic of all to break curses and stuff, some people, people with issues and heartbreak and darkness in their lives still needed to hear the words, which, to Emma, was refreshing. "I love you."

"I love you."

Nothing chaste about this kiss, she thought, closing her eyes and wallowing in it, and on a castle balcony, no less. An inability to stop grinning broke them up, settling for a tight, blissful hold while looking out at the horizon, the sun pouring down on everything, and it felt like theirs for the taking. At some level, Emma had always known that the words "happily ever after" contained more than they let on, but at last she could feel it. This was only the beginning.


End file.
